Comments on: Photosynth: build interactive 3D environments from multiple 2D images

By: Nate

Nate — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:42:56 +0000

… Yeah, you nuked the embedded synth I just attempted to stick in the comments. It works great where posting iframes is allowed, though. You can even determine whether it autoplays or waits for user interaction.

By: Nate

Nate — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:41:15 +0000

I’m not sure how much html gets stripped out of comments, but here goes…

By: Nate

Nate — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:34:59 +0000

@Samer: Synths are embeddable. Click the “” icon next to your synth to get the appropriate code.

Also, the reason for including both the synther and the viewer (the browser plugin) in one installation package is surely self explanatory.

The plugin is proprietary, so the reason that you need to install it to view synths is the same reason that you need to install Flash to view YouTube or Quicktime to view .mov videos or the full install package to play Quake Live in the browser. If browsers had advanced enough to do convincing 3D without relying on proprietary code, then perhaps we would have seen them use that. As it is, the viewer relies on DirectX for the 3D at present, hence even if you could get your hands on the plugin alone, what good would this do you on Linux or a Mac? Thankfully Live Labs seems to really want to get it up and running on the Mac (where all the photographers are).

As for the 3D complaints, the more pictures you take of an object, the more complete the point cloud of that object becomes. (Hold down the Ctrl key or toggle through the three display modes with the “p” key to see the point cloud.) Given that the Photosynth team has joined the Virtual Earth team, I’d say they have very real goals of creating something that starts heading in the direction of Crysis… eventually. Maybe we’ll see basic 3D surfaces extrapolated from the point clouds in a year or two.

Also, additional keyboard navigation controls are available. WASD etc. For the full list, click here.

@Intrinsic: SeaDragon, while purchased by Microsoft, is only the loading/streaming half of the equation. The original work for the photo registration came from the Photo Tourism project of Noah Snavely and Microsoft Research (although I admit that it ran on Linux there). For you jaded Linux types, Noah’s got the code for his next generation work (look for Bundler at the Photo Tourism site) freely available for download. Go knock yourselves out.

By: Intrinsic

Intrinsic — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:15:34 +0000

Photosynth is a very cool product, but ms didn’t totally create this, they purchased technology from a company called Seadragon back in 06 and it ran on Linux at the time. But surprise surprise it doesn’t anymore thanks to ms! Maybe in the future it will, but i doubt it.

By: Samer

Samer — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:04:00 +0000

@ Joel: its 3D in the sense that you could, say, snap your way around a sculpture (or a product) and get a semblance of a an-round 360 degree experience.

@ Pedro: you’re right — its not 20 megs as stated but 20 gigs. Not bad at all .I corrected this in the text.

By: pedro

pedro — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:58:05 +0000

I haven’t yet tried it, but the fact that you

a) have to use an hotmail (yuck) account and
b) you have to install an app instead of an extension (hello piclens!) really makes me not too fan from a start.

But, let’s see if it is any good – if it is, then I’m afraid of its future; you see, if it is good, you’d like to embed stuff from it on other sites, mashup things and whatnot. Will Microsoft deliver in that department? We’ll have to wait and see…

Oh, another thing… how did you manage to upload 45 MG of images, if the maximum they allow is 20 (twenty? what is this, 1999?) MB?

By: Joel in Sweden

Joel in Sweden — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 06:49:01 +0000

I’m underwhelmed. I was expecting a 3D world, not a click and zoom thing. I’d like to take a lot of photos of, say the outdoor arena where I work, stitch them together and then be able to export a 3D fly-by video clip that I can use in marketing.