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Microsoft Releases Photosynth
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Aug 22, 2008 10:43 AM
from the look-at-me-i'm-flying dept.
from the look-at-me-i'm-flying dept.
Spy Hunter writes "Photosynth has graduated from a 'tech preview' to a complete service. Now you can upload your own photos and have them automatically transformed into a 'synth': a 3D fly-through reconstruction of your home, your vacation, or anything else you can take pictures of. Learn more about Photosynth at the official blog, see what Walt Mossberg has to say about it, or just go try it out right now." According to Mossberg, Photosynth works on PCs using IE or Firefox, but not yet on Macs. We've been discussing Photosynth since its introduction.
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Photosynth Demo 204 comments
A couple of days ago Microsoft labs released a demo of their new Photosynth software on the web. Photosynth allows the aggregation of social picture networks (a la Flickr) into a completed image in addition to allowing a level of depth to image browsing previously unavailable. There is also a very impressive video of the demo available.
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Photosynth Team Does It Again 144 comments
STFS found an update to the
Photosynth stories that we already ran. You might remember the amazing photo tourism demos. Well, this new version kicks things up several notches with paths and color correction to more smoothly transition between photos taken in different lighting conditions. As before, this stuff is worth your time. Check it out.
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By pc... (Score:3, Insightful)
Does he mean it will also run on linux? I doubt it...
Sounds ... cheesy...
Re:By pc... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:By pc... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you'll need some WINE with that.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So no Linux, probably not for a long time. Anyway, I can't see why things like this need to be a web service, so I'm waiting for the open-source variant.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Who cares if it runs on Linux. Here is the REAL question we want answered: Does it work on porn?
Re:By pc... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, teenage boys need 3D trips inside the human body...
Parent
Re:By pc... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds ... cheesy...
And if it was a new offering from Google or Apple, people would be posting how cool it is.
Parent
Re:By pc... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Ego (Score:5, Interesting)
Those zippy cool mac ads seemed to have hurt Microsoft's ego a little. maybe... maybe it's a ruse... a false modesty sort of thing...
Re:Ego (Score:4, Interesting)
Those zippy cool mac ads seemed to have hurt Microsoft's ego a little. maybe
A fact that has not gone unnoticed at Ubersoft [ubersoft.net].
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Trust us, as soon as we have a Mac version ready, it will be up and available on our site."
They couldn't even be bothered to work out that i was running Linux....
**sigh**
Well, I s'pose Ubuntu will have a ways to go before it's as cool as Apple!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Ego (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Ego (Score:5, Funny)
I have no idea who "Coheed and Cambria" are. Obviously, I'm not nearly cool enough to own a Mac.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps it's a salient point because of the disproportionate usage of Macs among photographers - i.e. the target audience for this tool.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe there is proportionally more PROFESSIONAL photographers that use Macs for image processing, but Photosynth is clearly a crowdsourcing application and its target audience is everybody, since now everybody has a digital camera and everybody processes their amateur images on their home computer. So we're back at the general PC/Mac split in home computers.
Re:Ego (Score:5, Informative)
Christ, they can't even do the standard browser ID string parsing ans see I'm running Linux? Fscking idiots.
You have been trolled by Microsoft. You have lost. Have a nice day.
Parent
Re:Ego (Score:4, Insightful)
For me, using Mac just since 2003 thought me something...
"Trust us, as soon as we have a Mac version ready, it will be up and available on our site."
That thing is a lie. They are the same company who abandoned working Silverlight for PPC just about a month ago. So, if you think they will ship Mac version soon and ignoring Linux, think again. They are at least openly telling you in a way that "don't even hope", they are plain lying to Mac users.
A true multiplatform thing like that product they offer can be coded in Trolltech Qt or Java (both with OpenGL) . Can you picture MS using Trolltech Qt or offering a "Java Webstart" tool? Use OpenGL?
Parent
Re:Ego (Score:5, Insightful)
They are the same company who abandoned working Silverlight for PPC just about a month ago.
So because they're not developing for obselete hardware that even _Apple_ probably won't release their next OS for, they'll never release a Mac version *at all* ?
Your logic is broken.
Parent
Re:Ego (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a fair point, but half the purpose of having something that can load up in a browser window is for cross-platform compatibility since the server (in this case, IIS) is doing the heavy lifting. Considering that the number photographers using Macs is incredibly disproportionate to normal Mac/PC ratios (probably 50%+ among serious photographers, vs under 10% for normal users), they almost certainly doomed the project to failure before it started by not having a standard, cross-platform implementation.
If you need platform-specific stuff, make it a standalone desktop app that talks to the site's webservices layer. At least with that, there's a reasonable enough explanation of why it's not (yet) cross-platform. I'd understand if it's not too useful in Curl, but any other browser should be able to handle it fine.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, a binary plugin should never be able to use unique features of the underlying OS? Please...
Anyway, Mac zealots would still be whining even if Microsoft had made Photosynth a standalone app, just as they did with World Wide Telescope.
According to these Mac zealots, it's wrong for Microsoft to make *any* Windows-specific software (standalone or browser plugins), but it's just fine and dandy for Apple to make Mac-only software, and such Mac-only software (like iLife) is even used as ammo for "Mac Rules, W
Re: (Score:3)
How is that a lie? They said when they have it ready. If that never comes it's still true. :P
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Better question is why bother? Why would they try and entice Linux users? Linux users are notoriously cheap (I guess I can't speak for all but _I_ am a cheap Linux user) so they can't ever make a dime from them and in turn they don't represent a market. It would be irresponsible to use resources to devote to such a user base with no potential return beyond publicity. But even if they did it would just be labeled a devious plan to subvert Linux.
Not actually 3D? (Score:2)
I haven't tried it, only skimmed the review, but I'm guessing this is like those panoramic bubble photos -- that is, if you have a bunch of pictures that fit together, it'll let you turn your head around.
What I kind of doubt is that it'll turn it into actual 3D, as in, polygons and such.
If it could, well, it would greatly simplify modeling in some places. Find a cool, old building that looks like you want your game to look, snap a few photos, and hey, presto, instant level design!
Re:Not actually 3D? (Score:4, Informative)
It does make them 3D (I remember seeing the video of the first demo last year I think it was). But it's not quite precise enough to be used for level design, or at least it wasn't back then. Still very cool though :)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I could only see the one Flash demo which runs on their homepage but no other views work without Windows. Having seen that, it looks like they took existing techniques for stitching together pictures and added a dynamic capability to that. Cool but not really a brand new concept. Photo stitching software has been around for 10 or more years.
So they get 5 points for taking existing tech, making it look like a new web technology, and create another Windows-only technology in todays mix of browsers and computi
Re:Not actually 3D? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's what it does:
Just like a typical panorama stitcher, it identifies similar points, then runs an optimisation algorithm in order to line those points up.
Whereas a panorama stitcher warps the images to match a particular projection, and optimises the points in 2D, PhotoSynth optimises the points in 3D.
The viewer application then lets you view the collection of photographs, as if they were hanging in 3D space -- in the right part of space -- and fade in and out of view as you stand in the right place to see them.
For quite a small number of photos, you get a BIG cloud of control points, and the application lets you view that cloud and hides the photos. Often the result is quite a good 3D model - it's clear that if you were to draw vertices between them you'd get a decent wireframe of the subject.
However, the application does not attempt to turn your photos into a convincing fully rendered 3D model. Rather it provides a spacial model for navigating between photos. It's always explicit that you are looking at one photo, with some other photos, dimmer, around it.
I think that's quite nice - that it doesn't pretend to be more than it is.
The slideshow option is rather neat. It simply steps through all the photos, but the transition between them shows you how they are spacially related.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
From the sounds of it, this might be the next MS killer app.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
put it in the PC and rarely ever look at it again
A main reason for that is that most picture viewers suck quite a lot, they make photo viewing a chore instead of making it fun, since you either have to navigate manually from photo to photo or because you have to wait quite a while for the thumbnails to load, which then of course are not big enough to be of much use. When on the other side you have something like Surface or Photosynth where you can freely zoom in and out and navigate the photos in a quick and painless manner, things start to become fun and
Re:Not actually 3D? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it doesn't do this at all. Time to at least give Microsoft some credit here, it does a pretty decent job of figuring out the 3D layout of everything and allows you to move around as much as you like.
It's obviously not EXACTLY right (Although I'd bet that with more pictures, it's more accurate) but it's close enough that you could make a pretty good "virtual tour" of just about anywhere with nothing more than a bog-standard digital camera.
It's definitely impressive.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
TED Talk Demo of Photosynth (Score:3, Informative)
The short version: it's pretty fucking cool [ted.com].
The long version: The first time I saw the demo of Photosynth I was blown away. The second viewing wasn't as exciting which tells me that it's the concept of connecting 2D photos to a 3D model that's really amazing, a spatial way to navigate disconnected 2D data.
haha (Score:2, Funny)
i'm going to try it on my own shadow. result is a black ninja?
Nothing to see here, move along (Score:4, Funny)
From the site: Only Windows XP (SP2 or SP3) and Windows Vista are supported at this time.
No Linux support? In this day and age? Bah.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wow I skimmed past the Mac part. I'm browsing to it with Ubuntu. They're not even cool enough to stroke me off right.
Works on PCs. Or not. (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't work on my PC. Not even in FireFox.
Oh, wait, you misspelt 'Windows' as 'PC', an easy mistake to make.
Windows Only, and some mutterings about Mac. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just in case you hadn't guess it was Windows only. It's from Microsoft and they care about making money, which they do a great job at. Linux and bug fixes do not make allot of cash for them, so don't expect to much support for either and don't whine about it. Thanks, so much. :)
Re:Windows Only, and some mutterings about Mac. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Req's (Score:4, Informative)
While navigating a couple galleries... It feels like I'm drunk and forgot how to use a mouse.
Remember kids, set Graphic Acceleration to Full!
Minimum System Requirements
Important: Photosynth makes heavy use of your graphics hardware. If you have an older graphics system, Photosynth may not run. Also, Photosynth requires that your graphics acceleration be set to full.
Operating System: Only Windows XP (SP2 or SP3) and Windows Vista are supported at this time. Running Windows on a Mac? Photosynth runs under Boot Camp only. Parallels and other VM software cannot run the viewer.
Web Browser: Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, and Firefox 3
Memory: 256 MB of memory is a bare minimum; 1GB is recommended.
Graphics: Minimum 32MB of graphics memory required, 64MB or more is recommended. Photosynth runs on some DirectX6 capable cards and all DirectX7 cards.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait a second. I have 1G of memory in my 2K system with a 128MB Nvidia card and Fx2, but I can't run this because I don't have XP or Vista? This is a definite WTF?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I know its hard to beleive, but Microsoft -does- add APIs from versions to versions, and XP (and even more so Vista) have a lot of these. They're not going to spend months recoding a feature from scratch for 2k thats built in XP.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A posting, with video, on the VMware Fusion blog [vmware.com] begs to differ. You do need to be running VMware Fusion 2 latest beta though.
Cheers,
Ian
Porn (Score:4, Funny)
Actually. I'm going to go and try that.
I'm going to wear out the shutter on my camera (Score:5, Interesting)
My main concern is that MSFT has stated that they'd love to basically stitch every photo together into a virtual world nearly (not quite, but close). I don't normally have privacy concerns and issues, but this 'could' potentially get a little funny. Do I really want to photosynth my apartment or desk at work and then have that linked locationally to the rest of the world? I'm not so sure.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Crashes Firefox 3 for me (Score:3, Informative)
Re:meh (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, because the reason the average 'time-to-own' is four minutes is because the researchers were fucking with the wrong people and sites.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)