Photsynth, New 3D panorama project from MS labs Options

[helvick]

Photosynth
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.

[CosmicRocker]

Yeah. I noticed this blurb on New Scientist 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.

[helvick]

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.

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 more here Many 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.

[DEChengst]

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

[Indian3000]

You can try the Photsynth tech preview



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

[dilo]

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

Hey Mr Hawking, welcome to Italy!

[Indian3000]

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.

[djellison]

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

Booooooo.

[paxdan]

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

[djellison]

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

Doug

[ElkGroveDan]

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.

[DEChengst]

BAH!

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

[remcook]

Cool
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20080814/...d-photo-viewer/

[CosmicRocker]

Cool

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.

[ElkGroveDan]

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