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Photosynth is live !

labs.live.com — The first public release of Microsoft's Photosynth is Live !. Photosynth stitches many identically sibling images in to a virtual 3D world of panorama. Savvy? http://sudhakar.wordpress.com

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  • scepia, on 10/12/2007, -60/+11Only for IE. Buried.
    • benggg, on 10/12/2007, -3/+47This is AMAZING software. I don't care what browser they require.
    • RadiantBeing, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26Who cares what browser it's for? This is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. If they play their cards right, they'll have the entire world in a few years. Imagine a cross between google earth and flickr.
    • sstocker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18It's a technology preview. Live Mail was once only for IE as well.

      The error message itself is encouraging:

      "This version of the Photosynth technology preview runs only on Internet Explorer 6 and 7. The Photosynth team is very interested in making the technology available outside of IE, so stay tuned for updates..."
    • pseudojd, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3WHEN can I upload my pictures and have it work the magic?
    • DigitalDud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11It says it currently takes hours or days of processing time to create a collection from photos. So until they make it practical, you don't get to make your own stuff.
    • digitalsin, on 10/12/2007, -15/+5Troll. Buried.
    • acff, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10browser elitists are among the biggest geeks you'll ever come across. buried!
    • Rikkochet, on 10/12/2007, -12/+5Buried? Just like you!
    • loneBoat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Buried? Good grief, and I thought the "No FF, NO DIGG!" guys were nuts... Erm, what praytell did you bury it under??

      I think it's awesome...
    • MusicalGenius, on 10/12/2007, -10/+7Mac is nothing compared to this.
    • hchaudh1, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1Photo stitching is nothing new or exciting? Yes, photo stitching with fade-in/fade-outs, a few animations is ok. But for me, nothing to see here, moving along.
    • RandomSkratch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Wow... all I can say is gg Microsoft!

      I can't wait for this to be available for the public. Combine this with Flickr and Geo-Tagging, you could make these with so easily and with the help of many others!

  • utcursch, on 10/12/2007, -15/+14Duplicate
    http://digg.com/software/Photosynth_Technology_Preview_is_here
    http://digg.com/tech_news/Microsoft_Live_Labs_Photosynth_preview_available
  • lox500, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6"you will need to be running with administrative privileges." Just think of all the vista users that will switch to admin accounts.
    • ankyhbk, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2that is truly an amazing product coming out of M$. behemoths don't go down without a fight, i suppose.
  • tange1, on 10/12/2007, -10/+4Doesn't seem to load in IE for me.
    • hotpepper, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Same here. I shut it down after an hour of "installing".
    • VirtualRichard, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Was fine for me. But then, I'm on 24Mb ADSL ;)
    • hotpepper, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1I'm on a 100Mb T1.
    • BrokenBeta, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4It just keeps asking to install the ActiveX control...
  • glitch1501, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The Piazza San Pietro in Rome looks awesome. It makes me want to go there!
    • tygern, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Piazza San Pietro in Rome is amazing, but Photosynth is actually showing Piazza San Marco in Venice, and equally beautiful piazza.
    • glitch1501, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2you can go to both from the site
  • rej1587, on 10/12/2007, -14/+4Windows XP SP2 and Vista Only

    The Photosynth technology preview runs only on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.

    That's pretty lame.
  • superkendall, on 10/12/2007, -13/+4Sorry, IE only - come back when you support a browser I can trust.
  • yensed, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Great program... But I really wish It was a stand alone Download and Install program. I don't want to use my browser for things like this.
  • outofpaper, on 10/12/2007, -8/+0I found Steven Hawking in the plaza! He's behind and slightly to the right of the home view.

    http://venducheznous.com
  • VirtualRichard, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16This really is impressive. Dissing it just because it does not yet work on other browsers is simply petty. Respect the developers of this amazing technology. They must have worked night + day for this.
  • krewenki, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3so.. many.. 30" displays. urge to kill... rising...
  • disconnecting, on 10/12/2007, -13/+1Is it just me, or is this the dumbest thing i've ever seen.
    It's like some click slide show with enchanced transitions.

    I think resources could be better put elsewhere.
    • krewenki, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8based on other responses to this item, and it's escalating digg count, I think it's safe to say it's just you.
  • badken, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7This is fascinating... when I was working at Apple in the Quicktime VR group (mid-90's), we were researching a very similar technology. I worked on some tech demos of the stitching part, but while I was there it never really got far beyond the deep research phase. Shortly after I left, Jobs took over the company, and nuked the Quicktime research budget as part of getting Apple's financial house in order. Now, 10 years later, MS is releasing a tech demo of that same technology.

    BTW, for the curious, I strongly suspect that the images in the tech demo are heavily manipulated manually to make it look good. One of the hardest things about putting together a panorama out of a lot of arbitrary pieces is making mobile things in the image look good. Things like the people in the plaza, and the birds everywhere would have to be dealt with manually, as a number of arbitrary captures in the area would never have all the mobile objects in a scene in the same place.
    • oncold, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Well, I can tell you ;-) nothing is manually manipulated, just algorithms doing a damn good job.
    • badken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Sorry, but there's nothing an algorithm can do to generate nonexistent image data.

      If you have two overlapping or adjacent photos where a person is at the edge, only half visible in one photo, and partially out of frame in the 2nd photo, there's nothing you can do to generate the missing middle part of that person. I couldn't see any artifacts like this in the tech. demo. So, either there were a lot of simultaneous shots taken of the mobile elements of the picture, or there was some manual touch-up done.
  • digitalArtform, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I do a lot of virtual set extension work that way http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2004/11/nodal_point_pan_2.html

    http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2006/04/nodal_point_pan_3.html

    ---

    http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2004/10/nodal_point_pan.html

    http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2004/10/nodal_point_pan_1.html
  • BicBall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4its pretty nifty, but i want to be able to see all the pictures at once, not one, seeing a bunch of dots and flying around isnt as 3d as it needs to be
    • tutivlahos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Me too, on the those previews videos, they were able to do that.
    • jdughi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0there's a ui element that lets you switch to seeing every photo in 2D (or hit ~)
  • bouche, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7This would be a GREAT way to archive your entire house and belongings for insurance purposes!
    • thermus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Unless your computer got stolen too...
  • Astronutty, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3"Photosynth is live ! apollo13 submitted by apollo"

    quote: "# Q.When can I build my own collections?
    # A. We’re working on it! We want to provide this capability as soon as we can but there are some real technical hurdles to solve before we’re ready for primetime."

    So it is not "Live"... inaccurate title.

  • digitalArtform, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Paul Haeberli did some interesting work in this area back in the early to mid 90's

    http://www.graficaobscura.com/merge/index.html

    His was more about transforming the pics in 2-space, rather than hanging them in 3-space
  • Hatuey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2...Finally!
  • ClintEastman, on 10/12/2007, -8/+0Already posted http://www.digg.com/software/Photosynth_Technology_Preview_is_here
  • 0KonTroL0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Nice, this is great stuff.
  • plingboot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Cool, I remember seeing an early version of something like this from Microsoft research labs way back in '98, interesting to see how far its come.

    (old version? 3d photography section : http://research.microsoft.com/vision/cambridge/ )
  • NoahK, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Sorry, but that demo is SLICK!
  • dennytang, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Everyone's burying this because it's IE only? It's about the technology, not the browser. It's Microsoft so of course they're going to make it compatible with IE first. Stop pretending to be an expert because there's nothing wrong with IE (unless you install all those spyware activex). If you want to see the live demo then install the activex and use IE. If you don't, then don't bury it just because you're a browser fanboy.

    I just copied the url from firefox and pasted it in internet explorer. How hard can that be? No offense, but it's sad to know that browser fanboys exist.
  • PromaneX, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Does it take some time for the images to load? All I could see was lots of dots representing the scene , and i was so exited too, looks like I'm going to have to go buy a new pc!
  • DogHumpsMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I'm not normally one to offer any praise to Microsoft, but I have to admit that's a pretty nifty piece of software.
  • juicebag, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This is just amazing. Must have taken a lot of work to take all those pictures.
  • andykram, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1lol, please tell me I'm not the only one who chuckled when it said "56k: Not Recommended"
  • atrerra, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This actually impressed me more than Vista does. Great work.
  • kevin.gc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Badken,

    I worked on the research side of this project.

    Here's the same technology at work on pictures scraped from Flickr. No photo-doctoring involved.

    http://phototour.cs.washington.edu
  • StaticGTF, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Worked perfectly in FF/IETab. 1,5minute installation and voilá!

    The most amazing thing is that ppl are actually digging something that the "evil dudes" at M$ produces!

    At least I didn't see that one coming...
  • 2012, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It said no to my graphics hardware. "Nothing to see here; move along." Real nice.
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