Microsoft Releases Photosynth 247
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.
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)
Re:By pc... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you'll need some WINE with that.
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:2)
Well, Wine is not a VM. So who knows, until someone tries.
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: (Score:2)
Yeah, medical schools need 3D trips inside the human body...
Re:By pc... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, teenage boys need 3D trips inside the human body...
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.
Re:By pc... (Score:4, Insightful)
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].
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)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
MS Hotmail still suggests us, OS X users to "upgrade to IE 6" to have full functionality my friend.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, that's a bad comic.
Copy and paste three out of four, strange inexplicable layout (ok, a lot of comic characters are too close when they have a conversation, but people don't talk to each other from 20 feet away! In a background-less void, no less!), bad art.
Thanks for sharing.
Re: (Score:2)
My god, my eyes are bleeding now.
To think that there are comics out there which are worse than User Friendly is every way, when User Friendly was already pretty bottom-of-the-barrel in all departments!
Re: (Score:2)
Christ, they can't even do the standard browser ID string parsing ans see I'm running Linux? Fscking idiots.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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:2)
How many processors you have? I got 4 PPC G5s running on 4,5 GB of RAM. Thanks to Adobe, Flash 10 now uses all 4 of them in SMP fashion to cope with complex effects etc.
Adobe must be behind the times to spare such development time to "obsolete" hardware.
Apple WON'T release Snow Leopard for PowerPC because of a basic reason: There is no speed advantage of pure 64bit code/kernel on PPC64bit hardware because PPC was designed with 64bit in mind from the start. There are no "extra registers" and so on. Even funn
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Snow Leopard is said to be a "bare bones" "performance" and in fact "cloud computing" release of Leopard, that is why it still has "Leopard" name. The possibility of things and the change of concept, (if it works) may make me buy an Intel Mac. At least a Mini.
Apple supports even G4 on Leopard release. What misses is (as usual), scientific and technical explanation of why Snow Leopard won't be released on PPC to stop these trolls buried in some "Developer note" page. Of course perhaps Apple doesn't really
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:2)
They are promising "Video support for MSN" messenger for 3 years or so now ;)
Their "soon" could be Pluton time or something.
A third party, open source application has video support for MSN (aMSN I think) and people joke to them about it, they aren't even effected.
Re: (Score:2)
Your logic doesn't follow. Just because they stopped Silverlight for PPC Macs doesn't mean they won't have a Photosynth version for OS X.
Of course, I'd bet it will be Intel-only.
Re: (Score:2)
If it ships Intel only, it is a Windows application packaged in OS X app so it is still not a OS X program.
Just like Silverlight. I am counting months to hear about first buffer overflow bug on that junk, fortunately Intel mac owners aren't impressed with their flash wannabe too so it is not so popular.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand how Intel-only predicates that it's a Windows application packaged in an OS X appliation? How does that follow?
The development environments of the two are nothing similar, and even though they compile down to the same instruction set I don't think that's what Silverlight is doing (*). There are fewer resources necessary to develop and support Intel-only applications than there are to support Universal binaries... especially for complicated CPU intensive tasks like video decoding. The f
Re: (Score:2)
I am in Video business and the biggest issue would be the codecs as they are generally optimised ASM code.
As VC1 and whatever codec they use can be played back on OS X/PPC and even encoded fine, they don't have any excuse rather than being either a evil company or pathetic.
The most CPU intensive codec, H264 works fine even on Mac Mini 1.42 Ghz unless you try mad things like 1080p.
Decoding Video , if you know how to use CPU enhancements such as Altivec (e.g. Apple h264decoder.altivec) is not a big deal espec
Re: (Score:2)
they can't even do the standard browser ID string parsing ans see I'm running Linux? Fscking idiots.
And acknowledge to the general masses that Linux exists? They realize that nerds know about Linux. They realize that friends of nerds have heard of it (but probably don't want to try it themselves). The last thing they want to do is to show that it's a 3-way race between Win/Mac/Lin. They want it to be Win vs. Mac on the desktop, so they can focus on one opponent. At least to the general masses.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Asus EEE which has Linux pre-installed is more expensive than generic laptop running Windows.
The return of official Silverlight for Linux (and 64bit) could be: "See, we are really out to race with Adobe, we aren't just trying to kill Flash because it has multiplatform support which bugs us".
Of course, you would expect it from a sane company, not a failing monopoly which really doesn't know what to do with their money.
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.
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 :)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
From the sounds of it, this might be the next MS killer app.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe you're one of the tens of millions of serious photographers or fans of photography. People even go to museums to see photographs! Can you imagine what silly scrapbookers those people must be?!
Why? I have yet to figure out who sits around on their PC/Surface/Etc and looks at pictures... Most people are happy with a simple slide show on their TV, digital picture frame or screen saver.
I just became an uncle again and my parents go stupid over pictures of the kid, yet they take the photo, put it in the PC and rarely ever look at it again until the screen saver kicks in. They don't sit around organizing and laying out the photos in any special way. At least not as much as these multi-touch and software packages make it out. You'd have to have no life or be a scrapbook-er to care about the photos like that, and [sarcasm]I'm sure we all know a billion people that scrapbook. [/sarcasm] I know one and I haven't talked to her in years.
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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hold down CTRL.
Alternatively, hit P to cycle through view modes (cloud, photos, both).
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Now that's funny...
Re: (Score:2)
Quick, someone post a bunch of pics to it from the Winchester Mystery House...
Re: (Score:2)
Perspective tricks only work from a single perspective, the moment you see the object from more then one view point you no longer have an illusion, but only a weird formed object. So it shouldn't cause much trouble here, since the software works with multiple photos.
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:2)
Unfortunately, we're not cool enough to run on your OS yet. We really wish we had a version of Photosynth that worked cross platform, but for now it only runs on Windows.
Trust us, as soon as we have a Mac version ready, it will be up and available on our site.
Almost feels like they care.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Given MS a break guys.. wait for some time before you start bashing them
Re: (Score:2)
Google Earth, Picasa could be ported to OS X and Linux easily thanks to Trolltech Qt Framework and wisely using OpenGL.
If a lib/framework they use doesn't exist on OS X or Linux? It won't ship. Who bashes them? We just laugh at them and naive people who believes in their claims.
Re: (Score:2)
No worries, thanks to Mono and Moonlight and the excellent vendor named Novell, you will be enjoying this great technology in 2020! Make sure to check archive.org that time ;)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I cant get it to do anything either, FF3 & IE7. I just get a black box with nav arrow controls
Yes, that's it. This is Microsoft with a first release. What did you expect??
Re: (Score:2)
I still remember when
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)
Re: (Score:2)
How do they make money from this anyway, well, I'm sure they will try somehow but I see nothing on the site that makes it sound like they're selling the service or plan to sell it. I do see this though:
What you see on this site is the first of many versions of Photosynth. Call it beta, call it 1.0, call it whatever you want⦠just know we are hard at work adding support for more browsers, more platforms, and more hardware, and just making the experience that much more amazing.
So maybe they'll actually try to make it more readily available.
Re: (Score:2)
"Photosynth works on PCs using IE or Firefox, but not yet on Macs. "
The "yet" part bugs me. They should stop lying and people should stop trying to pro actively shut up people about their amazing insist on being old Microsoft.
So it doesn't run on Mac? I don't give a shit and look elsewhere for my apps. They probably can't code for OS X anyway. Yes, I think that way.
Re: (Score:2)
The "yet" part implies that their actually working on a Mac version, but that they got the Windows version out first. Doesn't it make sense to support your own platform first before supporting others?
Then I s
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Trust my word, they must be monkeying with Cider technology to pack it to a OS X .app and it will be Intel OS X only.
Want to bet?
MS Office for OS X of course exists, it sells damn well and they make great money out of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, they mean to imply as much; that doesn't make it the case though. And in this case, given the target demographic of a photography-oriented application, you would have to be (pardon my French) Fucking Retarded not to support the Mac platform.
So what else is new? (Score:2)
bug fixes do not make allot of cash for them, so don't expect to much support
Exactly, which is similar to why they don't focus on IE unless there is competition. Lesson: don't support or use MS software and they will work hard to make it better. Do use it and depend on it and they will let it stagnate. Either way it doesn't help you to focus on MS. So exactly why would I be whining about what MS does in the first place?
Re: (Score:2)
MS has an entire business unit named "MacBU" (and it's probably profitable). I'll give you 3 guesses what OS they write software for, and the first 2 don't count.
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:2)
1999 just called and said it wants your 10 year old operating system back.
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.
Goat.cx (Score:2)
Is this some kind of looney bin, what's with the padded walls with tears all over them ?
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)
Just use VMWare Fusion if you're on a Mac (Score:2)
Crashes Firefox 3 for me (Score:3, Informative)
Neat! Now what? (Score:2)
So, this seems to have a really high "neato!" factor, but not a lot of practical use. Except for maybe 3D modelers in Hollywood?
Maybe this can be rolled into Photoshop or Hugin [sourceforge.net].
For those who can't run the Windows-only app... (Score:2)
Here's what it does, so you can at least see what it does, rather than guessing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p16frKJLVi0 [youtube.com]
That said, I'm on a Mac, so according to them I'm too cool to run it.
Flash huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
So, anyone find it interesting that this is written in Flash and not Silverlight?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Evil Conspiracy! (Score:2)
Since all photos used to create a synth are public, does that also mean that Microsoft usurps a right to further use them however it sees fit? Use of the service also requires an account, which just happens to require a Windows Live ID.
It's all an evil conspiracy to bring back MS Passport, steal your photos, and serve you ads.
Lovely error if you're not on WIndows... (Score:2)
Redirecting to a host in the ".aspx" domain. :)
I eagerly await ... (Score:2)
... You Suck at Photosynth.
Re:meh (Score:4, Funny)
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:2)
Yes, hotels should replace their perfectly working VR stuff which is supported on both OS X and Windows (iPhone in future I bet) and they should lock themselves to a thing which only works in Windows.
I am glad Hotel guys are kinda old fashioned and sticks to stuff which is working for them.
Re: (Score:2)
What? How is this in any way remotely similar to Quicktime? Quicktime is a video format and Microsoft has enough of those, this beast is entirely different.
Re: (Score:2)
Quicktime VR [wikipedia.org]
As seen on many an estate agent's web site.
The GP is correct - aside from platform dependence problems, Photosynth would be a great way to present "virtual tours".
Re: (Score:2)
If 80% of iPhone owners and 60% of Symbian owners use their devices to browse the web, it is not just "OS X/Linux" platform dependence problem anymore. People should be really careful for technologies they pick and the vendors doing them.
It is not that (in advertisers eye) you lose that 2% nerd using Linux, you lose $1000 Symbian or $2000 iPhone user.
I know a TV station which their high user profile owns Macs as big as 40% percent and they can't sell on demand movies to them because they started with Window