Photosynth Space Shuttle Demo
Almost a year ago I wrote about the new Microsoft Photosynth technology, calling it The coolest photo technology I’ve ever seen. I still think that. Dammit! How much longer do we have to wait for a public release? Seriously this is Microsoft’s main problem – they… take… too… long… to… do… anything. Let’s have it already!
Anyway, here is a neat demo of the technology as applied to the Space Shuttle. You need to follow this link to go and actually check out the image collection.
For Endeavour’s historic launch on August 7th, 2007, Live Labs joined forces with NASA to provide a Photosynth tour of the shuttle from vehicle assembly building to the launch pad. Thousands of photos intertwine to provide three dimensional, 360 degree perspectives of one of human kind’s greatest innovations.
Sorry, in the following video the sound is off from the people’s mouths as they are talking, but if you want to download the 98MB original you can do that here instead.
Here is another fantastic video demonstration of the platform from the 2007 TED conference.
Oh, and don’t forget they’ve got a bunch of other photo collections besides the Space Shuttle.
One email per post. Twenty years of this, still going. Unsubscribe whenever.
I think that this is very cool and could be useful, but I don’t understand why they are taking so long to release it out to the public.
Well, there are several reasons.
1.) Google Street view requires that a specialized camera that looks in every direction be used to take all of the photos.
2.) It takes pictures of streets. Which are possibly the most boring thing you can photograph. Besides moss.
3.) Photosynth can merge many photos of the same event taken from different people in different places and even at different times into a single mashup. No one on Earth has anything like it. Therefore it rules.
Finally, you can get the Photosynth software and make your own. Try that with Google’s technology.
John P.
Why are people so excited about this? It just smashes a bunch of pictures together and uses a typically shoddy Microsoft interface to let you zoom in and unnaturally skew them. Google street view is about a billion times cooler than this
I see this evolving into holo decks technology with the use of integrated micro chip human implants. direct input to the visual cortex hey, who knows?
Its very good.but i wonder why is microsoft taking so long for its public release.
All I can really bring myself to say is: holy crap :)