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Nikolaj Stagis

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07.08.07

Photosynth: Traveling without moving, part 1

Recently a trial version of Photosynth from giant Microsoft’s Live Lab came out. This is more than new way of sharing your holiday pics! It is also a way to visit places online in 3D - places that you love, that you can’t remember, didn’t get a full perspective of or even never had a chance to see!

And it looks to be quite groundbreaking 2.0 software able to change the world of 3D panoramic imaging and mapping, something expected to become big, by using our collective pictorial memory of online photos. So professional use of Photosynth will probably also be quite interesting. Maybe someone among our blog readers additionally can fill in on that?

Through just one of your holiday pictures Photosynth creates a world, that connects all other worlds by hyper linking, grouping and navigating between online pics, eg. entirely of images from Flickr, then creating a 3D map or universe out of the total semantic information from the digitally available photos on www.

Tags and metadata support the emerging of a model for spatial navigation and full-scale online experience of that photographed place, from combining images. So, that one shot of yours or your own photo collection becomes a 3D entry point into the rest of the world. That’s a perspective that really illustrates the idea of ‘The long tail’. The benefits here just become enriched through more use and cross using; like it’s the case with most social tech and software. And software like Photosynth somehow also illustrates how www will evolve.

I'm quite curious and impressed by the possible perspectives of Photosynth and the like! To get your own impression, you can take a look at the Photosynth Live Lab presentation here:

Wow, that's great! Real collaborative software! Here's the link to the developer blog: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/blogs/ and the site: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

This project is so exiting! I imagine that something like this combined with Google maps someday will give us rich detailed 3d modeled maps generated from user data. Only the future will tell how we can use this and if we really need it:-) but I believe that it will affect us somehow!

It looks amazing! Now hook up cameras and mobiles with GPS, so Photosynth can use the positions from the EXIF data. That would be something!

Thanks for additional links, Nikolaj!

...Yeah, hooking Photosynth up with GPS and mobiles would be something! But probably a bit in the future, since mobile platform capacities for generating heavier data are still quite limited. But one is alway allowed to dream on :-) What's EFIX data?

You're right Henrik; it's easy to let yourself be swept away by the exiting perspectives of new tech - not knowing if this one is really going to change the world, or if it's juts the idea behind the new tech that seduces you...It will be interesting to see what will be with Photosynth.

- as some wise guy ones told me; the real tech (or eg. environmental) revolutions taking place in our world, that will change our ways or lives, are often the ones that we are not aware of, or able to comprehend when they take plays, but only understand retrospectively...

The EXIF data is information attached to each picture. Right click any picture (well most) and go to advanced properties. You can find a description of the camera type, shutter speed, picture size etc. If the camera (or mobile camera) had GPS, the coordinates could be filed in EXIF as well. Then Photosynth (or something more advanced) could ultimately create a 3D environment based on all pictures from the entire world, interior and exterior, uploaded to say, Flickr and how they corelate to eachother based on the GPS coordinates. Then you could go from the picture of Notre Dame to the building in the background, expore that and go on and on only limited by the number and density of pictures in the world and Flickr.

Thanks for that fine explanation, Anders! Appreciate learning something new at least yeach day. The way you explain it, I imagine it would be something like virtually going treasure hunting, visually exploring the whole world - from your sofa? Fascinating and a bit scary (like most new technologies, I guess :-) 'Interior and exterior' - does it mean, that if I uploaded a pic of my home or even living room and sofa, then, in theory, one could enter that space visually too, if connected through other photos?
- well, hope bright people will find a better use of Photosynth and the like than imitating real travel in a second life kinda way...still, it would be cool to visually explore real places on this planet one would have a hard time visiting, or need to get a perspective of long distance.

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