Cool Dept: Microsoft Announces Photosynth

[Garritan]

Photosynth from Microsoft Live Labs may change the way you think about digital photos. Photosynth will take a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyze them for similarities, and display them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space. http://labs.live.com/photosynth/whatis/

You can virtually walk through or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle, seamlessly zoom in or out of a photograph, or see what hundreds of other people shot at the same location. Very cool

There's a demonstrational video and a 'smart photos' example page here: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/video.html

No word yet on an exact release date.

[Leaf]

That is some weird wild stuff, yes very cool. I guess those arrows on the floor are where you change your veiwing location, maybe.

edited out question: i see the demo now.

David

[Reegs]

That is really cool and really impressive.

The screenshot of the 3D view reminds me a lot of an old Puzz-3D computer game I have, actually.

[Houston Haynes]

Cool idea - now they need to put the game wave/audio engine with it so that music can play with a picture or group of pictures and cross-fade as you navigate through.

[ohernie]

I didn't see any mention of how long it takes a particular level of PC to render a collection of photo's.

Ernie