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Posted by: helvick Jul 30 2006, 03:11 PM

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/whatis/
MS Live Labs seem to be about to pitch an impressive development in image processing for the masses - automatically constructing 3D models and environments from (large) collections of arbitrary standard 2d images.

There's a lot of hype and little content at this stage but its an intriguing idea.

Posted by: CosmicRocker Aug 2 2006, 03:43 AM

Yeah. I noticed http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn9654&feedId=online-news_rss20 today. It sounds like Autostitch on steroids, or would that be crack?

The thing I found interesting in the MS Labs piece is the following statement. "Photosynth is a technology preview of things to come but we want to give you the chance to try it out for yourself. The team is working around the clock to put the finishing touches on an experience that you’ll never forget."

I didn't know that MS followed the lead of Google and joined this "Labs" competition. I haven't quite come to grips with the way they are doing this, but it does sound intriguing. The competition should be good for internet users in the end.

Posted by: helvick Aug 2 2006, 07:02 AM

MS Research has put out a number of really interesting niche "products" over the past few years and I know they spend a lot of money in some very arcane research so they've been in on this labs idea as long if not longer than el Goog. A friend of mine has spent the last five years doing pure mathematics research in Cambridge thanks to Bill & Co for almost no direct return as far as I can make out although I'm sure there is one.

MSR research projects include Conference XP, Portrait, Map Cruncher, Snarf and http://research.microsoft.com/research/downloads/default.aspxMany of these are either directly useful API's or better yet open\shared source projects so they are worth a look see.

This new Live Labs group appears to be an offshoot of MSR.

Posted by: DEChengst Aug 12 2006, 09:51 PM

I wonder what will happen if we throw the entire Spirit or Opportunity dataset at Photosynth. If it could handle such an amount of data it sure would be cool. Imagine doing this on Mars:

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/videodemo.html

Standing on the rim of Endurance crater look around and zoom in on an MI close-up of a RAT hole

Posted by: Indian3000 Nov 10 2006, 08:37 AM

You can try the Photsynth tech preview



http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

Posted by: dilo Feb 2 2007, 10:16 PM

Looking to piazza S.Marco pictures, I found a familiar face:

Hey Mr Hawking, welcome to Italy!

Posted by: Indian3000 Aug 6 2007, 01:56 PM

NASA Photosynth Home

http://media.labs.live.com/photosynth/NASA/default.htm

Current collections include:

* The interior and surrounding area of the Vehicle Assembly Building, the largest one-story building in the world, used for housing external fuel tanks and flight hardware, and the location of the Orbiter stacking with the solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank to prepare for the space shuttle launch.
* Endeavour on the launch pad including amazing detail shots taken from a helicopter
* The previous flight STS-117 Shuttle Atlantis returning from Edwards Air Force Base in California to Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility.

Posted by: djellison Aug 6 2007, 02:07 PM

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

Booooooo.

Posted by: paxdan Aug 6 2007, 03:09 PM

If you have an intel chipset mac it'll run 'doze

Posted by: djellison Aug 6 2007, 03:25 PM

I know - I have bootcamp installed...but that's not the point.

Doug

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Aug 6 2007, 03:30 PM

I have a new system with Vista that I'm slowly migrating everything over to. The jury is still out but I kinda like it.

The Photosynth trial refused to install on Firefox (yes, I clicked on the yellow bar and all that). IE however did seem to work. It's very cool, but definitely still a work in progress. It will definitely be a while before we can plug in our Martian scenery.

Posted by: DEChengst Aug 6 2007, 03:52 PM

BAH!

You need 128 MB of graphics memory. I only have 16 MB

Posted by: remcook Aug 15 2008, 11:21 AM

Cool
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20080814/uni-washington-microsoft-research-yet-another-mindblowing-3d-photo-viewer/

Posted by: CosmicRocker Aug 16 2008, 06:06 AM

That's insane. This whole concept of deriving 3D from a collection of random images is quite clever, and initially somewhat counterintuitive to me. I'll stay tuned to future developments posted here.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Aug 16 2008, 03:57 PM

Someone let me know when the full version of either product is available for purchase.

Posted by: lyford Aug 16 2008, 07:16 PM

Well, not purchase but you can try the source code:

http://phototour.cs.washington.edu/bundler/

Posted by: stevesliva Aug 16 2008, 07:26 PM

An interesting footnote to the discussion about MS's research interests is that the presentation was hosted on YouTube, a Google property, and used source images from Flickr, a Yahoo property. And the closest thing I've seen in a production environment is Google Maps Street View. Seems like simply a neat program, until I realized I've used Street View in real life a few times. It would be interesting to see the cloud of photos/videos already hosted online merged with Street View, so that when you go to a famous location, like Times Square, you get a very intricate environment to navigate. It's too bad the location and time metadata for most photos would be imprecise.

Posted by: DEChengst Aug 21 2008, 04:22 PM

Photosynth has gone live:

http://photosynth.net/

Posted by: um3k Sep 7 2008, 01:13 AM

Anyone else here using Photosynth? Here's my gallery: http://photosynth.net/userprofilepage.aspx?user=um3k

Posted by: CosmicRocker Sep 10 2008, 04:47 AM

um3k: I've been experimenting with it, too. I deleted some of my worst disasters which involved planetary images from various flybys. Here's my gallery.

http://photosynth.net/userprofilepage.aspx?user=rockhound

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 10 2008, 05:45 AM

I really like the "rock pile" CR.

As soon as I find some time this week, I'm going to give it a try.

Posted by: charborob Sep 10 2008, 01:08 PM

No luck! Photosynth doesn't work on a Mac.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 10 2008, 06:34 PM

OK I gave it a whack from my summer vacation photos:

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=DF020DF7-8CB9-4BA6-AB87-1767C6AA8333

Posted by: imipak Sep 10 2008, 07:32 PM

I realise that part of what us poor deluded non-Windows users are missing out on here is the interactivity, but does anyone know if there's a way to export the results from Photosynth into a video format such as mpeg4 (or even, heaven forfend, Flash)? Perhaps a screen-capture movie?

Posted by: CosmicRocker Sep 11 2008, 06:07 AM

Thanks, EGD. I was unimpressed with some of my early rover image results, so I made and photographed the rock pile to convince myself that I knew how Photosynth was supposed to work. As it turned out, I should have taken a few more photos of the back side of the pile to get a 100% "synthy" score. I was kind of hoping that identification of some of the rocks in the pile might encourage other geologists to comment.

Your Brooklyn Bridge synth was very good. It almost appears as if you took those images to feed the Photosynth engine. Nice work, indeed, even if you were not thinking of it at the time.

Posted by: ilbasso Sep 12 2008, 11:06 PM

Wow, intriguing and very cool application, especially for freeware. I put up a test of http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=DCFE12A9-5BC4-474F-ADBF-6432CB7EB9C1

Posted by: CosmicRocker Sep 18 2008, 05:09 AM

I got some great pictures of the two barges stranded on the four-lane highway nearby, by Hurricane Ike. I thought Photosynth would match the images better than it did, but it's not bad. I think the best way to view it is to hit the "play button" and just watch it. I used 35 pictures. It created seven 3D models, and wasn't able to use 4 images. I think you'll get a good idea of what it was like walking around the barges. If you don't like the Photosynth view, you can just look at the individual images.

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=05415B97-502C-43D4-9FC3-C24D857EAFD7