Desultory Thoughts

Ever since I read about Microsoft’s Photosynth in July, I’ve been chompin’ at the bit to get a look at it myself and try it out. The time has come and it’s now available to touch and feel and SEE for yourself. If you like to cruise the world in Google Earth then you’re going to love Photosynth which takes pictures, analyzes them for similarities and then puts them in a virtual 3D viewing place in relation to the rest of the pictures. It doesn’t matter what angle the pictures are taken from, Photosynth puts them together to make viewing areas (currently there are four collections) seamless as if you were actually there.

At the moment you’ll need to fire up IE6 or IE7 in order for the software to work properly (doesn’t work in Firefox, although they’re working on it) and you’ll also need XP with Service Pack 2 or Vista.

Some tips as you move around in the pictures; don’t forget to make use of the zooming features. You can zoom by clicking the plus and the minus symbols, or use the scroll wheel on you mouse. It’s fun to see some of the detail in the high resolution pictures (especially in the art gallery collection) and it helps to get your bearings by zooming out and seeing all the tiny dots that make up the points of reference. Another fun thing to do is to see where the camera was when the photo was taken. This can be toggled on and off by clicking the camera icon. Little red triangles appear and when you mouse over one it projects the angle and crops the area of the virtual scene that makes up the photo from that angle.  Lastly, don’t forget that you can close the informational column on the left by clicking on the divider line in the middle.  This will maxmize your 3D model world and make cruising around experience even better.
Give it a try. Can you imagine when they give us the ability to upload are own collections? It’s coming soon, but for now we’ll have to pacify ourselves with the collections they’ve given us.

Click image for full-size view.