Microsoft’s Photosynth released. Photo Stitching On Steroids.
If you haven’t seen the demos of Microsoft’s Photosynth, it’s a software that takes photos of a location, and maps them into their 3D space, relative to each other. Think of it as the next step in the evolution of building panoramas. Instead of just building a bigger picture, each picture is scaled and rotated in 3D space, to recreate the environment. For example, if you snap some pics of yourself and friends on vacation at the Taj Mahal, and have also got some pics of closeup details, Photosynth will allow you to zoom in and out to each image, and get a feel of the ‘place’.
Other than uploading the images for compiling, Photosynth requires no human intervention, as it’s placement algorithms pic out key points, and do all the work from there. The more photos you throw at it, the happier it would be. I imagine that those once ‘so-so’ shots can now find a new life in building a more comprehensive photo-exploring experience.
Minimum System Requirements
Important: Photosynth makes heavy use of your graphics hardware. If you have an older graphics system, Photosynth may not run. Also, Photosynth requires that your graphics acceleration be set to full.
Operating System: Only Windows XP (SP2 or SP3) and Windows Vista are supported at this time. Running Windows on a Mac? Photosynth runs under Boot Camp only. Parallels and other VM software cannot run the viewer.
Web Browser: Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, and Firefox 3
Memory: 256 MB of memory is a bare minimum; 1GB is recommended.
Graphics: Minimum 32MB of graphics memory required, 64MB or more is recommended. Photosynth runs on some DirectX6 capable cards and all DirectX7 cards.
If you’ve got the specs to run it, hit the link and get it now.
Superb. I seem to remember Abobe experimenting with something like this a couple of years ago, but it never flew…I’d have to look into it.
I’m tempted to snap 10 bazillion pics at fan expo and making a photosynth out of them. 😀