Redmond, Washington — So far, Redmond Vole’s Photosynth has been mostly available as a consumer-oriented application, employed to meld multiple pictures together to create 3D views of places and spaces. But Microsoft on Thursday announced that it would integrate Photosynth with its Virtual Earth online mapping platform, encouraging businesses to combine the two technologies.
As yet, travel mapping was mainly confined to standard charts, aerial / satellite views, and placing of images into pin-pointed boxes. Now with the integration of both Virtual Earth and Photosynth opens up some fascinating possibilities for travel website owners.
The company envisions the move will allow real-estate agents, tourism groups, retail shops and government agencies to provide virtual tours of locations displayed online with 360-degree views using the combined technologies.“The integration of Photosynth into Virtual Earth marks an important step in enabling businesses to use Photosynth in a relevant, customer-friendly way,” said Microsoft Mapping and Local Search general manager Jeff Kelisky.
“Our Virtual Earth partners have great tools for creating, sharing, viewing and embedding synths across multiple platforms, and building engaging experiences.”
A real-estate agent, for example, could project an available house on the Virtual Earth map and then let people take a virtual tour of the house by navigating through a synth. The Photosynth technology stitches together hundreds or even thousands of photos into an image that a user can zoom into and navigate around.
The idea is that companies could sew together their Photosynth pictures with Visual Earth’s aerial, 3-D views. Microsoft has also included a new authorization tools that will allow a business to decide to keep a synth private. That might allow companies to use the technology internally. An insurance company, for example, could use the technology internally for risk assessment and claims processing, Microsoft said.
Amazingly, US space agency NASA and British tourism business VisitBrighton in the UK, has already integrated Microsoft’s Photosynth and Virtual Earth technologies to let potential visitors look at a map of the town and then closely examine photos of sites such as a museum, to work ahead of its public launch.
“This stunning collection of photographs using Microsoft Photosynth technology that provides people around the world with an exciting new way to explore the International Space Station,” said NASA Ames Research Center director Pete Worden.
“This collaboration with Microsoft offers the public the opportunity to participate in future exploration using this innovative technology.”
Photosynth software analyzes digital photographs and generates 3D models by “stitching” the photos together to create seamless views, producing an engrossing virtual tours of real estate for sale as well as letting people interactively browse aisles of stores presented at Virtual Earth, according to Microsoft. These models, dubbed “synths,” are viewed using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology.
“With the integration of Photosynth into Virtual Earth customers will be able to create detailed 3-D views of anything from places to products and from hotels to homes,” Microsoft said.
Here are some examples of other tourist attractions which have been “synthed”.
- Venice
- Martello Tower
- Moszna Castle
Companies can now also apply for commercial licenses to use Photosynth, which eliminates limits to the number of synths they can make and the amount of traffic they can attract.
To create and view synths in Virtual Earth, people must use Silverlight, Microsoft’s runtime and development technology for running Web-based multimedia applications.
And at last a fairly decent enough corporate video explaining the integration with some excellent visuals: