Microsoft Unveils Street Slide Map UI

theodp writes "For show-and-tell at SIGGRAPH 2010, Microsoft Research brought Street Slide, 'a multi-perspective street slide panorama with navigational aides and mini-map.' Very slick (demo video). Technology Review explains that Street Slide stitches together slices from multiple panoramas, making it possible to see all the shops on a street at once. Someone using Street Slide's panoramic view can slide along the facades looking for places of interest (perhaps guided by logos or ads at the bottom), and zoom back in to a classic Bing Streetside bubble view at any time."

Comments

Why don't they use Silverlight?

[bogaboga]

I am surprised that folks at Microsoft have decided to employ Adobe's Flash other than their own Silverlight.

You see, in the past, one would get a dialogue asking them to install Silverlight in order to see content. It makes me wonder whether Silverlight is slowly dying - at least in Microsoft's opinion. Remember the KIN ?

Re:Why don't they use Silverlight?

[mark72005]

No - something had to have entered the public consciousness before it could possibly be remembered.

Re:Why don't they use Silverlight?

[PPalmgren]

Well, its win-win for them in this situation. Using flash kinda slights Apple, where Silverlight is proprietary lock-in.

Re:Why don't they use Silverlight?

[recoiledsnake]

What makes you think they're using Flash. Only the demo video is in Flash, the implementation will most likely be Silverlight(new version of Bing Maps already uses it). Also, the only way to develop apps for Windows Phone 7 is through Silverlight(XNA for games), so I don't they're abandoning it anytime soon. Far from it, they're pushing it more.

Re:Why don't they use Silverlight?

[bogaboga]

That sounds reasonable but as indicated in my post, one would get a dialog advising a Silverlight install; in fact, Microsoft's 'modus operandi' in the past had been to 'force' an install or upgrade.

These days, I see nothing pushing Silverlight at all!

Re:Holy crap!

[UnknowingFool]

Microsoft Research does many innovative things. It's Microsoft management that either fails to capitalize on it or takes a good idea and ruins it. Sometimes good ideas (ie MS Kinnect) escape and makes it into a useful product.

That reminds me of this

[Culture20]

From seven years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_panorama
http://www.cs.iupui.edu/~jzheng/RP/index.html

Re:That reminds me of this

[Loiosh-de-Taltos]

Except that is entirely different. That is mostly what google street view does (except expanded with view bubbles). That is simply a long panorama. Google Street View is a panorama + 360 view bubbles.

Street Slide takes Street View-like view bubbles and intelligently stitches them back into a panorama for getting a good spatial map of an area. Then when you need to zoom back in, it pushes you into the correct bubble. It is much easier for a person to view and use than either of the previous models.

Re:That reminds me of this

[Culture20]

Except that is entirely different. That is mostly what google street view does (except expanded with view bubbles). That is simply a long panorama. Google Street View is a panorama + 360 view bubbles. Street Slide takes Street View-like view bubbles and intelligently stitches them back into a panorama for getting a good spatial map of an area. Then when you need to zoom back in, it pushes you into the correct bubble. It is much easier for a person to view and use than either of the previous models.

So what you are saying is that the panorama that is created by stitching image slices together (a la Dr. Zheng et al)...

Technology Review explains that Street Slide stitches together slices from multiple panoramas,

...has hyperlinks on it that bring it to a Google bubble view. I give props to Microsoft for putting peanutbutter in their chocolate, but they didn't do a lot of inventing here.

CSS Soda Can

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Reminds me of the CSS Soda Can that hit the charts a few months ago.

I still see a problem

[Linker3000]

But we still have to leave our basements to visit the shops do we? If only there was some way of telling the shops what we wanted and then they'd deliver them right to our door for mom to bring down.

Extinguish the pedistrians and cars.

[leuk_he]

Yes, Actually removing (content aware fill) of the cars and pedestrians out of those images would be a very good idea.

They were worried about handling slopes...

[aapold]

but I see it made the grade....

Re:Holy crap!

[ozmanjusri]

Microsoft Research does many innovative things.

Maybe if you call making an obvious incremental improvement of a competitor's existing product innovative.

It's not like there aren't other better implemented alternatives out there either. And those are real and working, not some recorded and edited demo with near infinite resources to make it look quick for the video...

This whole article is a Microsoft Marketing puff-piece. Even the (near identical) comments in most of the discussion forums have been orchestrated.

Re:Holy crap!

[FriendlyPrimate]

The rumor is that there's a reason for this. Cash-rich Microsoft supposedly employs some of the best and brightest software engineers on go-nowhere projects simply to keep them out of the available workforce. Since this talent doesn't end up in competing companies, this helps them maintain their monopoly position in their cash cows.

Microsoft is not full of idiots. The saying may go "Don't explain anything by conspiracy that is more easily explained by stupidity.", but that doesn't mean the opposite isn't true every once in a while.

None so blind

[westlake]

These days, I see nothing pushing Silverlight at all!

With the possible exception of Netflix...

Symbian...Microsoft's Flash challenger Silverlight hits Symbian

and porn. AEBN's Silverlight Player Gains Traction with Users

Re:Holy crap!

[UnknowingFool]

Maybe if you call making an obvious incremental improvement of a competitor's existing product innovative.

According to wikipedia: "Innovation is a change in the thought process for doing something, or the useful application of new inventions or discoveries.[1] It may refer to an incremental emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations."

So I guess the answer is yes. Plus the Kinect technology isn't the only thing MS Research works on. Some of the research is interesting. Whether it makes it into a useful product depends on many factors one of which is management. Xerox PARC is the best example of a great research center that has truly changed the world today. However, Xerox management failed to capitalize on many of the innovations there: Ethernet, smalltalk, GUI, WYSIWYG text editor, etc.

Re:Zowie Scowie!!

[badboy_tw2002]

I worked on this project, and you're right, its 100% the same and is not at all an improvement. I wasn't aware of this "Google Street View" you speak of. Have a link by any chance? I KNEW we should have posted the idea to /. BEFORE doing any work. I told my superiors you guys would probably already know an existing implementation, would have seen this 10 years ago in some other platform in a tangentially arranged mode, would not be impressed by it, and could probably make it in five minutes with perl if you wanted to, which you don't. But did they listen? NO!

Flickering multi-perspective scrolling

[BorkBorkBork6000]

Did anyone else find the multi-perspective really annoying due to the flickering effect of constantly changing images when scrolling?

I don't think having the perspective view really enhances our understanding of the scene. In reality, it's just going to increase the bandwidth necessary to run this app.

It would be nice if there was an option, at least, to turn multi-perspective off and just see a blended mosaic of straight-on views.