Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth
Create 360-degree 3D landscapes from your digital photos
Every so often, a genuinely new technology appears that astounds. Microsoft has launched a service at www.photosynth.com that’s designed to change the way you experience the places you photograph. By uploading a selection of photos you can use the free web service to transfer them into a 360-degree, three dimensional experience that you can click around and explore. The only downside is that it takes a little while to process your photos, so you’ll need a decent broadband connection.
Photosynth analyses all of the images for common features and pieces together the 3D environment where you can clock and zoom into the different images; the quality when you zoom in will depend on how good your digital camera is. You’re also able to share ‘synths’ with other users, while you can also pinpoint the location of your synth on Virtual Earth.
Eventually, the service will be able to take yor location directly from information embedded in your photos; an increasing number of camera phones and even cameras now have GPS, enabling precise positions to be plotted. In time, you’ll be able to explore places using other people’s synths!
The service was so successful on the first day that Microsoft had problems meeting demand. Paul Foster, Microsoft Evangelist for Photosynth, told us that the engineers working on the project needed to reconfigure the servers twice that day!
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