Microsoft Opens Up 3D Wonder Photosynth For Consumers
New York – Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, on Wednesday launched an online program that allows users to add collections of photos into movie-like three-dimensional images of places or objects. Photosynth, a 3D technological wonder from Microsoft Live Labs, has promoted from its “ooh, that is pretty” status to being a viable Web service for consumers.
Microsoft’s PhotoSynth makes it easier for users to create navigable, three-dimensional visual “tours” by automatically stitching together a set of digital photos of an object or place to recreate scenes that users can spin around online to look at from all angles or zoom in to check out a close-up detail.
PhotoSynth scans pictures and determines how they relate to one another, said Alex Daley, senior product manager for Microsoft’s Live Labs. For example, a user’s photos of the Piazza San Marco in Venice can be stitched together, allowing the viewer to wander through, take a 360- degree look at objects and zoom in to see architectural details.
“The technology, which originated in a Microsoft Research project, is an altogether new way of putting photographs together.”
“The photo has not basically changed since it went digital,” says Daley, which incubated the PhotoSynth technology before its release. He describes PhotoSynth as a “creative medium similar to photo or video, but just a little bit different.”
According to the company, Photosynth takes a collection of regular photographs between 20 and 300 photos are required, depending on the size of the place or object, and then reconstructs them in a 3D environment. It is important that shots overlay, and that they are taken from multiple vantage points and angles. The 3D model is created by a program that runs on the users PC before being uploaded to the server.
It could take Flickr photos of a monument like Notre Dame Cathedral from hundreds of separate accounts and compile them into one, continuous shot of the cathedral and its surroundings.
For now, PhotoSynth is a consumer product, but Microsoft sees potential for commercial uses as well. “If you think about the commerce scenarios, you have this ability to provide a generalized overview of that that you might not have been able to before,” Daley says.
Users can install Photosynth at photosynth.com. All photos that are added to the site will be public and visible to anyone on the Internet. It is currently only available on Windows-based machines running XP and Vista, and users will have to sign up for a Windows Live ID to access Photosynth.
Microsoft is attempting to catch consumers’ attention with its Internet services amid mounting competition from Google Inc., which runs the top search engine and video site. Microsoft’s Internet unit, which lost $1.23 billion last year, has mostly created me-too products, rather than real innovations, according to investor Tony Ursillo at Loomis Sayles & Co. in Boston.
There was “overwhelming demand” for the service when it debuted online today, preventing users from being able to upload their photos, Microsoft said on a blog devoted to the product. The site was working again by 6:40 p.m. New York time, the company said.
The Photosynth Web site includes a photography guide for those just getting started as well as a downloadable video that demonstrates how to synch.
“Because Photosynth is so new, you will probably run into an occasional bug or hiccup,” the Live Labs team warned in a blog post. “Whether you have a brilliant idea or find a bug, please let us know. We’ll do our best to address them.”