Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Budapest Panorama, at 70GP, Now the World's Largest Digital Photo

Posted by timothy on from the cool-one-up-man-ship dept.

hasanabbas1987 writes "It's just been a few months since a 45-gigapixel panorama of Dubai claimed the title of world's largest digital photograph, but it's now already been well and truly ousted — the new king in town is this 70-gigapixel, 360-degree panorama of Budapest. As with other multi-gigapixel images, this one was no easy feat, and involved two 25-megapixel Sony A900 cameras fitted with 400mm Minolta lenses and 1.4X teleconverters, a robotic camera mount from 360world that got the shooting done over the course of two days, and two solid days of post-processing that resulted in a single 200GB file — not to mention a 15-meter-long printed copy of the photograph for good measure. Of course, what's most impressive is the photo itself [Note: requires Silverlight]."

39 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. No Thanks by ushering05401 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because of the technology chosen for the presentation layer.

    1. Re:No Thanks by MollyB · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Please excuse my utter ignorance, but what is wrong (philosophically, security-wise, or wishing leprosy on oneself, etc.) with installing Moonlight for a quick peek at the picture? Can it be uninstalled? I feel like the little fishy who's mesmerized by the angler fishs' lure...

    2. Re:No Thanks by blirp · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, it requires Silverlight. Even with Moonlight installed I get:

      Sorry, but Silverlight is not supported on this operating system.
      Silverlight works on Windows and on Mac OS (Intel only).

      ... kind of strange.

      M.

    3. Re:No Thanks by epp_b · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because of the technology chosen for the presentation layer.

      I can tell, just by the thumbnail, that this isn't true. It is actually quite a dull photograph.

    4. Re:No Thanks by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because I choose not to use the technology required .

      Fixed that for you.

    5. Re:No Thanks by Peach+Rings · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why:

      1. Would you have silverlight installed
      2. Wouldn't you view the picture if you had silverlight installed?
    6. Re:No Thanks by Peach+Rings · · Score: 5, Funny

      Count me in. Lets give this thing the force of an internet petition.

    7. Re:No Thanks by choongiri · · Score: 2, Insightful

      what is wrong ... with installing Moonlight

      I have moonlight installed. Here's what happened:

      Sorry, but Silverlight is not supported on this operating system.

      Silverlight works on Windows and on Mac OS (Intel only).

      Fail.

      I tried spoofing the user-agent to MSIE 8:

      Install the latest version of Silverlight to see this content.

      Fail.

      Props to the photography, but somebody needs to tell them 1990 called, and wants its browser sniffing rubbish back. I would only be mildly bothered that they used silverlight, but they didn't even do it properly.

    8. Re:No Thanks by Colonel+Korn · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because of the technology chosen for the presentation layer.

      Why do you assume that a lot of pixels will make it beautiful?

      --
      "I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
    9. Re:No Thanks by brasselv · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The technology was not chosen - it appears to be more the motive behind the event.
      Turns out that MS, in fact, is the main sponsor of this thing, according to the website.

      --
      "Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
    10. Re:No Thanks by bryonak · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So you say I should wait until monday, go to a store, fork over some cash to buy a copy of Windows, spend some time setting it up and installing Silverlight... and then claim it's unreasonable to say that they should've chosen a format that is easily available to everyone?

      Choice is very much dependent on perspective. It's hardly valid to claim that it's your fault if you chose not to own a Ferrari.
      Many people could if they really stretched out, got some credits, etc... but it's not worth to them.
      The same way it's not worth to me spending time and money just to view this image.

    11. Re:No Thanks by T-Bone-T · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wasting time? I don't even remember installing silverlight and it seems I did at some point. If it was a waste of time, I would have remembered it.

    12. Re:No Thanks by adolf · · Score: 4, Funny

      This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because I choose not to surrender my PC to a convicted monopolist.

      I still have a few machines on which I choose to run a filesystem written by a convicted murderer.

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
    13. Re:No Thanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      just pretend you have a mac and it works just fine with moonlight. install user agent switcher for firefox and use this agent setting:

            Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008061004 Firefox/3.0

    14. Re:No Thanks by Random+Destruction · · Score: 2, Informative

      nope. works fine here on ubuntu 10.04 x64. It told me i needed moonlight, so i clicked ok, and then restarted firefox. blizzam. big picture and shit.

      --
      :x
    15. Re:No Thanks by nacturation · · Score: 2, Funny

      I can tell, just by the thumbnail, that this isn't true. It is actually quite a dull photograph.

      There is the girl in the red bra, though she's not really that hot.

      --
      Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
    16. Re:No Thanks by derGoldstein · · Score: 2, Funny

      There is the girl in the red bra, though she's not really that hot.

      True, but the one in the black bra is nice, and the naked lesbian couple performing acrobatic sex on their porch is impressive.

      --
      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
  2. fsck Silverlight by jijitus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All that processing, and couldn't create a Flash viewer for it?
    If someone shoots a 70GP picture and no one is able to view it, does it matter at all?

    1. Re:fsck Silverlight by clarkkent09 · · Score: 4, Informative

      no one is able to view it

      I just viewed it. Its pretty awesome actually. Since you can't view it (?) let me describe it for you. When fully zoomed out, Budapest appears is a (pretty small) city in the distance and most of what you see is the surrounding countryside. Then with a very smooth zoom you keep zooming towards the city, until you see very clearly individual buildings and even people in the windows. Can you show me a Flash example of something like that?

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
    2. Re:fsck Silverlight by Peach+Rings · · Score: 4, Informative

      Can you show me a Flash example of something like that?

      Meet
      http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1739126&cid=33096788

      This too if you read TFS...

    3. Re:fsck Silverlight by Zak3056 · · Score: 5, Funny

      All that processing, and couldn't create a Flash viewer for it?

      IOW: Damn Microsoft and their proprietary format. They should be more open, and use Adobe's proprietary format instead!

      --
      What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
    4. Re:fsck Silverlight by gnalle · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Here is a html5-demo that does the same. It works well on Chrome, but no so well in Mozilla Iceweasel 3.5.11 http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Graphics/DeepZoom/Default.html

  3. Lets make sure to focus on what's really important by badboy_tw2002 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Lets make sure that this discussion focuses on the fact that they presented it in Silverlight and not the open and saintly Flash format. I don't want to veer offtopic here into discussing "gigapixels" and "robotic camera stands". That's not what this site is about.

  4. Unimpressive all things considered by wjh31 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This becomes considerably less impressive when you realize that this image is done with sponsorship from major partners, whereas images like the Dubai picture, or the 50 Gigapixel image in Vienna were both done by individuals.

  5. Amazing details! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Check out the 36th house on the left, if you zoom in enough you can just about see a quarter of a boob through the half opened window. Not enough mega pixels to see if its a female or male booby though :(

    1. Re:Amazing details! by Peach+Rings · · Score: 4, Funny

      And suddenly silverlight penetration in the Slashdot community triples.

  6. PS by wjh31 · · Score: 4, Informative

    oh, and half of it is sky which doesnt really count. While this is the case with the other two i mentioned, it is not so with the 67 Gigapixel image of Corcoado

  7. Re:[Note: requires Silverlight] by B4light · · Score: 5, Insightful

    OMG, Tribalism

  8. Re:Lets make sure to focus on what's really import by alexhs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Lets make sure that this discussion focuses on the fact that they presented it in Silverlight and not the open and saintly Flash format.

    Nobody likes Adobe Flash (excepted for Apple bashing time).
    We now have HTML5.
    However Flash is an important legacy format that we can't yet ignore (especially when all major browsers don't support HTML5 yet).
    Silverlight became legacy before ever gaining significant marketshare. Why should we care ? Also, as pointed by blirp, it's not really cross-platforms.

    Therefore, expect the same kind of off-topic threads that we get with paywalls or slashdotted links. No access to the material implies random off-topic discussions.

    --
    I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
  9. Wonderful by AnonymousClown · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And the ability to zoom in to certain views was pretty awesome. If Ansel Adams were alive today, I wonder what his opinion would be and if he would use such a technique. He would have ot do something. Many of the films he liked to use are no longer in production - at least in the 4x5 format he liked.

    --
    RIP America

    July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001

  10. Too bad. by AnonymousClown · · Score: 5, Funny
    The they have scenes were you can zoom in to certain parts of the photo. The one that zooms in on the nude beach where it appears that they're filming some sort of Playboy type of thing is really nice.

    Anyway, you don't want to install Silverlight.....

    --
    RIP America

    July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001

  11. Works with Moonlight... by sd.fhasldff · · Score: 3, Informative

    The idiots behind the site are using OS detection, so if you're using Moonlight on a non-Windows/OSX platform, you'll need to spoof your User-Agent string.

    Other than that, it works just fine with Firefox & Moonlight on Linux.

    1. Re:Works with Moonlight... by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Is there anything here for the Justice Department or the EU to look at?

      I would hope that the Justice Department would have something better to do than investigate complaints that you can only view a particular photo on a particular OS. Of course, I could be wrong.

      --

      How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
    2. Re:Works with Moonlight... by sd.fhasldff · · Score: 5, Informative

      Spoofing as Firefox 3 on Vista worked for me.

      Specifically:
      Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6

      With Novell Moonlight 2.3.

    3. Re:Works with Moonlight... by flerchin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Worked fine in Chromium, with moonlight 2.3. No spoofing required.

      The hatred for silverlight seems irrational, as most of us also have the adobe flash plugins installed too.

      --
      --why?
  12. Your loss by DogDude · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because of the technology chosen for the presentation layer."

    Great. Do you want a cookie? The only thing you've accomplished is to not see the picture. Nobody else really cares.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  13. FYI by GNUALMAFUERTE · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The first Browser ever was released December 23, 1990.

    --
    WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
  14. Enhance by poity · · Score: 4, Funny

    Enhance.. Enhance.. Enhance..

    --
    your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
  15. Isn't Google Earth a larger digital picture? by SlideGuitar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It seems like Google Earth qualifies as a much larger "picture".... continuously linked pixels creating a visual representation of reality resembling that which you would see if you looked with your eyes.

    Define "picture" or "photograph" as you will... many map databases integrate images to create images that are vastly larger and more interactive.