A few days ago, Live Labs released a plugin for Firefox. It had the name Photosynth. I was curious to see what it was, so I checked out the site. It said that it uses photos and puts them in 3-dimensional space. I downloaded the plugin (restart of Firefox was not required) and was amazed. You'll need Windows with IE or Firefox. Mac does not work, just like it said. I've tried.

When you first see the page, you'll see a photo in the center and many dusty dots around it. When you hover your mouse over the page, distorted squares will come up. Click on anyone of them and the whole scene moves and pans to view a photo at that location. The previous image will distort into perspective so that you can see the location of the new one. It's just a preview version and doesn't let you add your own photos (probably because it takes a lot of time to process the images), but there are a few collections for you to choose from.
Use the Fly Around button to see the whole scene. You'll realize that those dots are actually points of the 3d model constructed by the software. I hope they'll make them colored and more like solid objects in the future. Photosynth takes photographs and records the locations of different unique points on the picture (I guess by recognizing places with great contrast from its surrounding pixels?). Then it takes the whole collection of photos and stitches them together. I didn't know this technology could be remotely possible today...

I think this technology could be used in Google Earth, or, actually, more likely Live's 3D Virtual Earth. They could probably take only sections of the photos to skin the models. Just check out the Fly Around of the Grassi Lakes collection and you'll see how 3d they look.

EDIT: Wow, how could I forget to link. Here.

This post has been edited by szupie: Jan 26 2007, 12:42 PM

Woow, I just watched the videos to see how it looks like and the idea of bringing pictures together without tags and especially in a 3d model is pretty amazing! I wonder how they were able to code this technology. It's too bad I don't own Microsoft XP or Vista so I wasn't able to experience it. I like the technology and in the future if this keeps up we'll have more places to tour virtually in 3d.

its some nice work that they have done to create this. its a shame that we can use our own photos and create our own synths! so far its looking good though! cant wait for the final version!

i've know now
thanks for ur information
i'll try it

I just noticed a feature I didn't see before. It's the Show Cameras button on the top right. When you enable it, you can see where all the shots are taken from. I've wondered what those orange dots are, but now I know.

How can they find out the location of a camera just from processing the photos? I mean, wouldn't a photo taken from far away with a large zoom look the same as a photo taken close with a smaller zoom?

that is a great tool, I just love it. The cool effects and transitions.

For sure Microsoft is still one of the best Software developer with a lot of new ideas.

kewwl..i love Mic acting like this,..it's really very nice,..Microsoft stil, on top