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Microsoft Releases Photosynth
Posted by
kdawson
on Friday August 22, @11:43AM
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...
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Re:By pc... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:By pc... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you'll need some WINE with that.
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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.
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Re:By pc... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:By pc... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, teenage boys need 3D trips inside the human body...
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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...
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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].
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Re:Ego (Score:5, Funny)
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. :)
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Re:Windows Only, and some mutterings about Mac. (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
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Porn (Score:4, Funny)
Actually. I'm going to go and try that.
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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.
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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 :)
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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.
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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.
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Re:meh (Score:4, Funny)
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