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Imagine Cup (Score:3, Insightful)
So is this digital zoom stuff like the software that they "download off the internet in CSI: Miami" *Snicker*
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Imagine Cup (Score:4, Informative)
I was much more impressed with PicLens [piclens.com].
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Re:Imagine Cup (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not a new interpolation algorithm.
It's a live version of the The shift-and-add method or image-stacking technique used by astronomers for decades. It's just that now computer hardware is fast enough do it seamlessly.
Basically, the zoom is made from hundreds of still photographs taken from different vantage points. There was something similar being done with tourist destinations, if I remember correctly.
It's an interesting toy, but the practical applications are limited by the lengthy production process.
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Haven't you ever.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the actual software they use on CSI. Read more here [msdn.com].
I think he refers to the software in which they miraculously rotate a single two dimensional image to see stuff from other angles, or enhance gritty 320x200 CCTV images into uber-high resolution with no artifacts or fuzziness.
(Might have been in some other forensics/cop show they did that, though.)
Re:Haven't you ever.. (Score:4, Funny)
Load photo image.
Enhance.
(zooms in)
Enhance.
(pans around some obstacle)
Enhance.
(pans to the back door, opens the door?, reads license plate from some car a half-block away)
Enhance.
(finds intelligent life in Arkansas)
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No, but I've seen GigaPan (Score:4, Interesting)
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DeepZoom (Score:4, Informative)
My understanding is that you use different resolutions of the photo. The original photo is obviously the highest res you can have, but you can make successively lower res copies. More or less just bring up a a higher res version when the user clicks.
I saw this demoed at the Atlanta Code Camp [atlantacodecamp.com] back in March. Very cool to watch.
Multiple resolutions (Score:3, Interesting)
db
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, at least that's what it looks like when you use their silverlight app.
You can actually spot the "seams" when zooming. Some of them aren't even superimposed correctly, leading me to believe that they are using a series a pictures taken with different cameras, instead of just storing lower resolution copies of the master image.
oh lordy... (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't
*slaps forehead*
Re:oh lordy... (Score:4, Informative)
If you can find them, zoom in on those Beatles bobble heads that the article describes. They're very highly defined. Then zoom out a bit and scroll around to (for example) the surrounding Hard Rock Cafe frame. Wonderfully blurry with respect to the bobble heads.
As you zoom out further, you'll notice how the "container" holding those bobble heads antialiases itself differently from the surrounding different-res artwork.
If you move amongst the different images of guitars and clothes (etc) you'll notice in the lower right that it identifies who the centered item belongs to.
So it appears to me that this is a number of different graphical objects that can be zoomed at relatively different distances at the same time. And it looks like they can be embedded within each other.
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Unfortunately? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately the demo requires the Silverlight plugin...
A Microsoft tech demo requires the installation of new Microsoft software to view? Who would have though?
While Silverlight might never be as widely-supported as Flash, I hope that perhaps the competition might force Adobe to do something about the CPU hog that is Flash.
Re:Unfortunately? (Score:4, Informative)
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Maybe not CSI (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe not CSI (Score:5, Informative)
Aside from that, it is another form of a "tile server" application... Just one that happens to be rather easy to use from a development perspective, and one that has been done really well (Zoomify/AJAX-based solutions don't hold a candle to the tile stitching and easing effects built into the MultiScaleImage control, IMHO).
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SeaDragon (Score:5, Informative)
Silverlight: silverlight.net
SeaDragon: http://labs.live.com/seadragon.aspx [live.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So they're essentially recreating Apple's Quartz + OpenGL + standard image formats with Photosynth + DirectX + WMPF.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So they're essentially recreating Apple's Quartz + OpenGL + standard image formats with Photosynth + DirectX + WMPF.
Simply put, apple does an incredible job visually representing itself, it's technology and providing a user experience that is very hard to match.
That said, I disagree that microsoft is recreating any preexisting technology. You could argue that DirectX is just like OpenGL, but that's likely grossly oversimplified.
Photosynth and Seadragon are demoed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHsYnkLnepk [youtube.com]
Neither of those are similar to things that apple has done.
layered bitmaps (Score:4, Informative)
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Yet another Deep Zoom (Score:4, Informative)
Deep Ream (Score:3, Funny)
Deep Zoom? More like Quick Load. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Kind of like what happens when you use Google earth very close (i.e., in-situ) to where the servers with the data are stored.
Youtube video of similar demo (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa-2-eYuJuk [youtube.com]
It's based on the same Hard Rock Memorabilia website, but shows slightly different sections of it.
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
MS Devs have done some amazing things within their allotted size quotas.
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Uses gigapixel imagery as source (Score:5, Informative)
Most people go ooh and aah because they (wrongly) assume that it zooms into normal resolution photos .
It doesnt (because as you and I know, it physically can't).
Deep Zoom does NOT perform CSI/CIA-style photo enhancement. If you dig deeper, you will find that what Deep Zoom is intended for is to enable one to focus on a smaller portion of a giga-pixel photograph so you do not have to download the whole photograph.
Think of it like a hierarchical smooth slicing of a large high resolution photograph and only downloading those "planes" and "sections within a plane" that the user is interested in seeing.
Interesting technology but not magic.
Re:Uses gigapixel imagery as source (Score:4, Informative)
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No free lunch (Score:5, Informative)
1) have the pixels in the first place
2) having more pixels in the first place.
Anything else is a fundamental violation of the laws of physics and math. You simply can not fake what you don't have without it being exactly that: a fake. There is no storage printing technology which could accomplish this level of zooming, and they carefully do not say that this is actually a continuous zoom of a picture on a stamp.
Deep Zoom works by letting you meld several images in such a way as pretend its one image.
Basically, its a con-job of transitioning several different images, where one is a re-photograph of sub portion of the original.
The implication of the article is that this is all one image containing a nearly infinite level of detail, which it most emphatically is NOT.
The author is probably equally impressed by street corner magic tricks.
Re:No free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
That's still very useful.
Basically, its a con job of transitioning several different images, where one is a re-photograph of sub portion of the original.
'con job' has needless connotations of an intent to deceive.
The implication of the article is that this is all one image containing a nearly infinite level of detail, which it most emphatically is NOT.
No. The implication of the article is that you can provide this as a user interface, which is very cool. Google Earth isn't interesting because its a 'con job' to let us think we can zoom in and out of a single monster image of the planet. Its interesting because its a natural and convenient UI to use.
And we don't have to download every single pixel of every single higher res image of a tree in Nigeria to have a closeup look at a parking lot in London. Detail is loaded on the fly, as needed, while the user gets a 'seamless' and comparatively low bandwidth experience.
Its not particularly new as an idea. Or even as an implementation. But maybe Microsoft's tools make setting it up substantially easier, and that alone would be a nice bit of progress.
The author is probably equally impressed by street corner magic tricks.
I am impressed by street corner magicians too. Not because I think they're magical, but because I am impressed at their showmanship, sleight of hand, dexterity, and general ability to appear magical.
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I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be impressive if the photo they demonstrated on was anything but a photoshop, but given that the 428x134 signature is 52x11 in the 350x237 statuette picture which is 29x26 in the 428x350 hard rock picture which is 87x87 in the 428x399 stamp picture, for the stamp to be real would require a 33 gigapixel stamp (which, at 1 inch square, would be printed at 33,000,000,000 DPI).
To me zooming in and displaying a different image isn't really as exciting at the article author makes it sound? Maybe I'm missing something because the journalist sounds pretty damn excited about it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically I can run around taking random photos some zoomed in, some not and seadragon will automatically stitch it all together.
The image is only 21K (Score:5, Funny)
Crashed FF 3.0 on my Mac (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Crashed FF 3.0 on my Mac (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course the Silverlight and the zooming works as advertised in IE 7.0.6
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Deep Ripoff (Score:3, Interesting)
Go to Pouet [pouet.net] and you'll find many demonstrations of this effect.
jdb2
This has been done. Better. (Score:3, Interesting)
See Charles and Ray Eames' Powers of Ten [youtube.com]. Now that's a zoom.
As for doing it in real time, Keyhole (bought by Google and renamed Google Earth) was doing this on PCs five years ago. Any decent GPU can do this today, and you can download Google Earth to see it.
I saw one of the first systems able to do this in real time about 25 years ago. It was inside a classified tank at a major aerospace firm, and required a rack of special-purpose hardware. The user interface was beautifully simple - a big trackball (for pan), a lever (for zoom), and a knob (for rotation).
Even Microsoft's little film isn't original. That technique has been used a few times in commercials.
So Silverlight doing this isn't exactly a big "wow" development.
Prior art (Score:3, Informative)
And I finally remembered; Jef Raskin's [wikipedia.org] "Humane Interface".
Zooming demo from several years ago that runs in Flash here. [raskincenter.org]
Quite similar, IMHO. Hmm?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What becomes of silverlight content, whether it's all eye candy or not, is anyones guess. What I can say is, developing for Silverlight 2 kicks ass.
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Re:Installing Silverlight (Score:5, Interesting)
It's technically possible to index silverlight 1 content, because it's content is "loose Xaml files", which means the site has xml files alongside html/js/etc, that is rendered by the silverlight 1 engine.
Silverlight 2 has the same capabilities, but noone will use them, because using C# for application/interaction logic is way more productive than using Javascript. Silverlight 2 sites using C# have the following structure
SomeSite.XAP (zip file containing all code and assets)
- AppManifest.xml
- ApplicationCode.dll (.NET Assembly containing Entrypoint and embedded assets)
- SomeResources/ (compressed folder)
- SomeResources/SomeImage.jpg (...)
AdditionalContent.XAP (supplemental resources and code)
- AppManifest.xml
- SupplementalCode.dll
This makes silverlight 2 apps and content updates really easy to, but are a barrier to extract information.
In both cases the information gained isn't nearly as useful as textual html content, and completely different heuristics would be necessary to analyze the importance of one unit of textual content vs another. Indeed, nearly all the visual cues (The relative position, color, highlights, animations, and reactions to the user) would likely be lost in the process. Perhaps the search engine that can index flash and silverlight content is one that analyzes both visual and textual content.
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Re:Installing Silverlight (Score:4, Informative)
It has become pretty popular in the past 5ish years since its learning curve isn't nearly as steep as its main competitor Finale.
People criticize Sibelius since, typically (at least for the versions I've used), its output isn't exactly professional quality.
It is, however, a great tool for music students.
Back in the day, Finale was the only option for amateur composers to produce professional looking manuscripts.
I'm not sure how far Sibelius has come in the last few years, so things might have changed.
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Re:Installing Silverlight (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:This is not new... (Score:5, Informative)
Photosynth is not Deep Zoomm. Photosynth reconstructs 3D models from collections of 2D photos of the scene acquired from different positions and angles. And as far as I know, Photosynth wasn't an acquisition - it was produced by Microsoft Research.
Deep Zoom was an acquisition, but it was the technology formerly known as Seadragon. It's completely unrelated - Deep Zoom/Seadragon is a 2D thing.
And it's an acquisition, but so what? Ooh, naughty Microsoft - how dare they take exciting technology developed by a startup and put it in the hands of millions of users? Shocking! Clearly it they should have left it to sink in obscurity.
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Re:This is not new... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:they stole it from blade runner and csi (Score:4, Funny)
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