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Input Devices Technology

Budapest Panorama, at 70GP, Now the World's Largest Digital Photo 207

Posted by timothy from the cool-one-up-man-ship dept.
hasanabbas1987 writes "It's just been a few months since a 45-gigapixel panorama of Dubai claimed the title of world's largest digital photograph, but it's now already been well and truly ousted — the new king in town is this 70-gigapixel, 360-degree panorama of Budapest. As with other multi-gigapixel images, this one was no easy feat, and involved two 25-megapixel Sony A900 cameras fitted with 400mm Minolta lenses and 1.4X teleconverters, a robotic camera mount from 360world that got the shooting done over the course of two days, and two solid days of post-processing that resulted in a single 200GB file — not to mention a 15-meter-long printed copy of the photograph for good measure. Of course, what's most impressive is the photo itself [Note: requires Silverlight]."
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Budapest Panorama, at 70GP, Now the World's Largest Digital Photo More

Budapest Panorama, at 70GP, Now the World's Largest Digital Photo

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  • No Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ushering05401 ( 1086795 ) on Saturday July 31, 2010 @01:39PM (#33096648) Journal

    This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because of the technology chosen for the presentation layer.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MollyB ( 162595 )

      Please excuse my utter ignorance, but what is wrong (philosophically, security-wise, or wishing leprosy on oneself, etc.) with installing Moonlight [go-mono.com] for a quick peek at the picture? Can it be uninstalled? I feel like the little fishy who's mesmerized by the angler fishs' lure...

      • Re:No Thanks (Score:5, Interesting)

        by blirp ( 147278 ) on Saturday July 31, 2010 @01:53PM (#33096740)

        Actually, it requires Silverlight. Even with Moonlight installed I get:

        Sorry, but Silverlight is not supported on this operating system.
        Silverlight works on Windows and on Mac OS (Intel only).

        ... kind of strange.

        M.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          just pretend you have a mac and it works just fine with moonlight. install user agent switcher for firefox and use this agent setting:

                Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008061004 Firefox/3.0

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Random Destruction ( 866027 )
          nope. works fine here on ubuntu 10.04 x64. It told me i needed moonlight, so i clicked ok, and then restarted firefox. blizzam. big picture and shit.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by choongiri ( 840652 )

        what is wrong ... with installing Moonlight

        I have moonlight installed. Here's what happened:

        Sorry, but Silverlight is not supported on this operating system.

        Silverlight works on Windows and on Mac OS (Intel only).

        Fail.

        I tried spoofing the user-agent to MSIE 8:

        Install the latest version of Silverlight to see this content.

        Fail.

        Props to the photography, but somebody needs to tell them 1990 called, and wants its browser sniffing rubbish back. I would only be mildly bothered that they used silver

        • Why would you expect a browser plugin to check the user agent to find its own version?

          • Without looking at the code, I speculated that if the server thought it was IE8 and served up the silverlight content, moonlight might be able to display it. The problem isn't that I don't have a plugin that can handle the content (to my knowledge, moonlight should display it just fine), the problem is that the dumb website won't even give me the content, because it thinks I can't display it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jgrahn ( 181062 )

          somebody needs to tell them 1990 called, and wants its browser sniffing rubbish back

          There were no browsers in 1990, but I see what your point.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by g4b ( 956118 )
        <blockquote>Please excuse my utter ignorance, but what is wrong (philosophically, security-wise, or wishing leprosy on oneself, etc.) with installing Moonlight for a quick peek at the picture?</blockquote>

        Just about everything you mentioned is wrong with it, yeah.

        I want flash to die. Now, even if it reminds me of Vampires in my browser, sucking my CPU-blood, I don't want it to die because of Silverlight or any other Werewolf which could turn at moonlight into something else. I want them to die t

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by epp_b ( 944299 )

      This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because of the technology chosen for the presentation layer.

      I can tell, just by the thumbnail, that this isn't true. It is actually quite a dull photograph.

      • Agreed. The format dictated the content, and the content is uninspiring.

        • I was disappointed in it because of the location they shot from. It's taken from János hegy. Although this is the highest point in Budapest, it is so far from the city itself that there isn't much to see.

          There is some waffle on the page about why they chose that point. They say it is the highest point and that the observation platform there will have its 100th anniversary in September. But then there is mention of the support and cooperation that they had from the district council for that distri

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by nacturation ( 646836 ) *

        I can tell, just by the thumbnail, that this isn't true. It is actually quite a dull photograph.

        There is the girl in the red bra, though she's not really that hot.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by derGoldstein ( 1494129 )

          There is the girl in the red bra, though she's not really that hot.

          True, but the one in the black bra is nice, and the naked lesbian couple performing acrobatic sex on their porch is impressive.

          • There is the girl in the red bra, though she's not really that hot.

            True, but the one in the black bra is nice, and the naked lesbian couple performing acrobatic sex on their porch is impressive.

            Ah, irony. Well, if you care to look she's in that cluster of apartment buildings just to the left of the default view. Zoom in and she's halfway up the twin towers on the right of the cluster.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DerekLyons ( 302214 )

      This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because I choose not to use the technology required .

      Fixed that for you.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bryonak ( 836632 )

        So you say I should wait until monday, go to a store, fork over some cash to buy a copy of Windows, spend some time setting it up and installing Silverlight... and then claim it's unreasonable to say that they should've chosen a format that is easily available to everyone?

        Choice is very much dependent on perspective. It's hardly valid to claim that it's your fault if you chose not to own a Ferrari.
        Many people could if they really stretched out, got some credits, etc... but it's not worth to them.
        The same wa

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Yaur ( 1069446 )
          Silverlight runs on Windows and Mac. Moonlight runs on Linux... no need to shell out cash for a new OS.

        • Choice is very much dependent on perspective. It's hardly valid to claim that it's your fault if you chose not to own a Ferrari.

          If the technology in question was like a Ferrari - rare, expensive, and available only to a few... you'd have a point. But the technology in question is more like a Kia - widely available and relatively cheap.

          The only way not to be able to view is to be in one of two minorities.

          The first are those too poor to afford a computer able to view the image. (Which by you

      • This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because I choose not to use the technology required .

        Okay, so I need to go and buy a copy of Microsoft Windows to view it. Then I find I need to buy a new computer, because my existing one isn't compatible with Windows (the graphics card, sound card and network card aren't supported). Oh, and then I need to go and buy some expensive training courses to learn how to use Microsoft Windows, because I've never actually had to use it before.

        Or, the

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Colonel Korn ( 1258968 )

      This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because of the technology chosen for the presentation layer.

      Why do you assume that a lot of pixels will make it beautiful?

    • Too bad. (Score:5, Funny)

      by AnonymousClown ( 1788472 ) on Saturday July 31, 2010 @02:19PM (#33096912)
      The they have scenes were you can zoom in to certain parts of the photo. The one that zooms in on the nude beach where it appears that they're filming some sort of Playboy type of thing is really nice.

      Anyway, you don't want to install Silverlight.....

    • Re:No Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by brasselv ( 1471265 ) on Saturday July 31, 2010 @02:23PM (#33096932)

      The technology was not chosen - it appears to be more the motive behind the event.
      Turns out that MS, in fact, is the main sponsor of this thing, according to the website.

    • Works with Moonlight... (Score:4, Informative)

      by sd.fhasldff ( 833645 ) on Saturday July 31, 2010 @02:25PM (#33096948)

      The idiots behind the site are using OS detection, so if you're using Moonlight on a non-Windows/OSX platform, you'll need to spoof your User-Agent string.

      Other than that, it works just fine with Firefox & Moonlight on Linux.

    • Your loss (Score:2, Insightful)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      "This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because of the technology chosen for the presentation layer."

      Great. Do you want a cookie? The only thing you've accomplished is to not see the picture. Nobody else really cares.

    • So basically,

      Q: What file format is it in?

      A: It's a program you have to run in order to see the image.

      No thanks.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jimicus ( 737525 )

        Thing is, there's no such thing as a file format suitable for loading such whacking great images. What application is even going to look at an image that size, let alone display it.

        Most of these applications download a drastically scaled-down version of the complete image and as you zoom in they load the relevant bits, scaled appropriately. You never download the complete image.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Silverblight aside, they expect me to judge its beauty on a Netbook screen? This may be a 70GP photo, but its not going to look any better than what I could stitch together from photos I've taken with a cheapo Cannon digital.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Skapare ( 16644 )

      Can you load the picture into your browser for a Javascript panner?

    • Don't worry. It's a bad photo. Uninteresting sky. Boring scene.

      Technology is great if it serves the art. This is just a demo of the tech, unfortunately. You'd think with all that time and effort it would have been worth paying a photographer to decide on the content. Oh well...

  • fsck Silverlight (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jijitus ( 1478465 )

    All that processing, and couldn't create a Flash viewer for it?
    If someone shoots a 70GP picture and no one is able to view it, does it matter at all?

  • Lets make sure to focus on what's really important (Score:5, Funny)

    by badboy_tw2002 ( 524611 ) on Saturday July 31, 2010 @01:51PM (#33096730)

    Lets make sure that this discussion focuses on the fact that they presented it in Silverlight and not the open and saintly Flash format. I don't want to veer offtopic here into discussing "gigapixels" and "robotic camera stands". That's not what this site is about.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by alexhs ( 877055 )

      Lets make sure that this discussion focuses on the fact that they presented it in Silverlight and not the open and saintly Flash format.

      Nobody likes Adobe Flash (excepted for Apple bashing time).
      We now have HTML5.
      However Flash is an important legacy format that we can't yet ignore (especially when all major browsers don't support HTML5 yet).
      Silverlight became legacy before ever gaining significant marketshare. Why should we care ? Also, as pointed by blirp [slashdot.org], it's not really cross-platforms.

      Therefore, expect the same kind of off-topic threads that we get with paywalls or slashdotted links. No access to the material implies random off-topic di

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Draek ( 916851 )

        Silverlight *is* cross-platform, the problem is the website in question is sniffing out OSes other than Windows and OSX/Intel, which is stupid but not a technical problem, lest of all Moonlight's.

      • Nobody likes Adobe Flash (excepted for Apple bashing time).

        And everybody loves Apple bashing time! -QED

        (someone really needs to make an "Apple Bashing Time" song...)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MikeUW ( 999162 )

      It's fine if they want to use Silverlight, but from what I can tell (maybe I'm wrong) they are only relying on the Web browser's useragent string to check if it can run the application. With the latest release of Moonlight installed on FF/Ubuntu, the default response I got from the website indicates I need to have Silverlight on Windows or Mac. If I switch to an IE8 useragent string (using useragent switcher), it then tells me I need Silverlight 3. I then tried switching to a useragent setting for FF on

  • This becomes considerably less impressive when you realize that this image is done with sponsorship from major partners, whereas images like the Dubai picture, or the 50 Gigapixel image in Vienna [photoartkalmar.com] were both done by individuals.

    • PS (Score:5, Informative)

      by wjh31 ( 1372867 ) on Saturday July 31, 2010 @01:57PM (#33096788) Homepage
      oh, and half of it is sky which doesnt really count. While this is the case with the other two i mentioned, it is not so with the 67 Gigapixel image of Corcoado [gigapan.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Skapare ( 16644 )

        But this is not a 360.

      • oh, and half of it is sky which doesnt really count.

        Unless they intentionally degraded the quality of the sky (which is possible), then in the technical sense, it does count. It would even count if it were 99% sky.

    • Agreed, and remember anyone can do this with 9 grand worth of Sony A900 digital cameras [google.com] and a $1000 robotic camera mount. [gigapansystems.com]

      These were impressive many years ago because someone had to build the hardware and write the software to do this, but now they sell kits. [gigapansystems.com]

      Please /., don't post a story when they reach 78 gigapixel or 83 gigapixel or 92 gigapixel or whatever, /. already did stories on 8.6 GP [slashdot.org], 26 GP [slashdot.org], and now we have a story on 70 GP. Just tell me when we reach 100, then 500, and 1000.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bcmm ( 768152 )

      This becomes considerably less impressive when you realize that this image is done with sponsorship from major partners, whereas images like the Dubai picture, or the 50 Gigapixel image in Vienna were both done by individuals.

      Was one of those sponsors Microsoft, by any chance?

  • Amazing details! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Check out the 36th house on the left, if you zoom in enough you can just about see a quarter of a boob through the half opened window. Not enough mega pixels to see if its a female or male booby though :(

  • Wonderful (Score:2, Interesting)

    by AnonymousClown ( 1788472 )
    And the ability to zoom in to certain views was pretty awesome. If Ansel Adams were alive today, I wonder what his opinion would be and if he would use such a technique. He would have ot do something. Many of the films he liked to use are no longer in production - at least in the 4x5 format he liked.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by etnoy ( 664495 )

      And the ability to zoom in to certain views was pretty awesome. If Ansel Adams were alive today, I wonder what his opinion would be and if he would use such a technique. He would have ot do something. Many of the films he liked to use are no longer in production - at least in the 4x5 format he liked.

      Don't insult the name of Ansel Adams.

      I'm a photographer myself, and I have yet to see a gigapan that looks lood. Why do people think that the resolution is interesting at all? A photo is all about capturing something interesting, and that requires hard work from the guy behind the camera. Gigapixel is the latest excuse for lazy photographers to make boring photos. A great (no, let me say legendary) photographer like Adams doesn't need gigapans. And large format photography is alive and kicking, btw.

  • I can almost see all the pr0n being filmed in the windows....
    • Just wait -- Google Earth is going to be exactly this. You'll be able to look at how much mustard people are adding at the hotdog stand, and what number they're dialing on their mobile. It'll be voyeur paradise. Don't think it'll just be done from satellites, either -- street view will eventually tap into those nice big camera networks like in London, and they'll rent spots on cellular towers so they can mount their own cameras.

      When you google someone's name in a couple of years, the first result will b

  • Enhance (Score:5, Funny)

    by poity ( 465672 ) on Saturday July 31, 2010 @04:35PM (#33097668)

    Enhance.. Enhance.. Enhance..

  • I can zoom and pan just the same in Google maps with a satellite photo. Is it that it was done in a single exposure? That seems irrelevant.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Skapare ( 16644 )

      It doesn't count because it's using a simple portable system to display, scroll, pan, and zoom. For corporate sponsorship, you have to use something proprietary, and avoid all that communist open stuff.

  • I'm no anti-MS zealot, but even I won't install Silverlight. For anything. OK... if YouTube stopped working then I probably would; but that's not happening. Give it up, guys. I don't need any more of that kind of crap on my machine.

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