Photosynth

[Antmeister]

This is the most unbelievable technology I have ever seen. For those who have worked with any sort of graphic or photo editing, you know the demands that high quality images take up on the computer.

Well check out this video and see the amazing detail you can get due to how it processes the data from the image. On top of that, look at how it relates photos to one another in a strange sort of 3 dimensional space.

Photosynth video

[JediKooter]

I can see this working with that table top computer thingee that Microsoft announced a couple of weeks ago.

[DaddyTorgo]

that's frikking amazing. That honestly could transform the way we use imagery and interact with media and things!

oh, and I agree with this comment on that site

I see this going past images, to any knowledge, facts, dates, events, formula...eventually "the sum of human knowledge" (the often quoted dream of encyclopedia writers) will end up somewhere on the/an internet. When this synth technology is developed to sift through all information; not just picture information, it will find the overlaps to connect it all and form it into one contiguous navigable mass of knowledge.

[TroyF]

Unbelieavable. That's just amazing.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by TroyF

Unbelieavable. That's just amazing.

I have amazing nerd-wood right now. That's incredible.

I only wish I had a huge monitor to look at it on like some of you guys

[rowech]

Wow....just wow...

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

I have amazing nerd-wood right now. That's incredible.

I only wish I had a huge monitor to look at it on like some of you guys

No, you don't. You'd be watching the thing on a loop. This is incredible. With the way technology keeps moving forward, I'm less and less amazed by most of it. Cars that can park themselves? Cool. Phones that are computers? Nice. HD/Plasma/Blu-Ray/DLP and all of the other home theatre technology? Very nice.

This? This is off the charts. This can change the world and make it a more amazing place.

I know, I'm a geek, but that clip is simply incredible.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by TroyF

No, you don't. You'd be watching the thing on a loop. This is incredible. With the way technology keeps moving forward, I'm less and less amazed by most of it. Cars that can park themselves? Cool. Phones that are computers? Nice. HD/Plasma/Blu-Ray/DLP and all of the other home theatre technology? Very nice.

This? This is off the charts. This can change the world and make it a more amazing place.

I know, I'm a geek, but that clip is simply incredible.

make sure you explore all the collections. And the blog has some neat "hidden features" like a way to use it as a screensaver or take an "auto-tour" type thing through a collection

And i'll see you in 3 days


http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

there's a collapsable bar on the left where you can change which of the collections you are in. I'm too busy playing with that one to go over and figure out what the homepage is

[Antmeister]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

make sure you explore all the collections. And the blog has some neat "hidden features" like a way to use it as a screensaver or take an "auto-tour" type thing through a collection

And i'll see you in 3 days


http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

there's a collapsable bar on the left where you can change which of the collections you are in. I'm too busy playing with that one to go over and figure out what the homepage is

Thanks for pointing out the link. It would have made sense if I would have added it in the first place. I am in awe of how it is able to pull up hundreds of photos in no time at all and still do so in a 3D space. This technology is just blowing my mind.

[BrianD]

I was all set to mock you guys for your geekness at some snappy graphics tricks, but then I watched the video and caught myself saying "holy crap" about every 30 seconds. I'm not sure if I was more impressed by the ability to look at a map of the US and drill down to street-level maps, being able to look at a whole book and then drill down to the individual words, or the ability to link image data to form a composite or a model. I think the last one was probably the most impressive.

[DaddyTorgo]

i seriously can see this changing the way we interact with the world during my lifetime. and i havn't been able to say that about anything else.

just one instance: the ability for newspaper to charge higher prices and release a digital version with incredibly detailed high-res ads (like you saw in the picture), magnified across that and across magazines and suddenly you have a cheap distribution model that ends up making publishing even more of a viable industry.

to say nothing of what would happen if you combined something like this with some of the data-mining capabilities of say my father's firm (they do back-end search engine type stuff...clients including people in Virginia and Maryland) to aggregate and synthesize data.

it really will change the way we interact with data on a daily-basis I think.

[JPhillips]

This will revolutionize porn.

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

i seriously can see this changing the way we interact with the world during my lifetime. and i havn't been able to say that about anything else.

just one instance: the ability for newspaper to charge higher prices and release a digital version with incredibly detailed high-res ads (like you saw in the picture), magnified across that and across magazines and suddenly you have a cheap distribution model that ends up making publishing even more of a viable industry.

to say nothing of what would happen if you combined something like this with some of the data-mining capabilities of say my father's firm (they do back-end search engine type stuff...clients including people in Virginia and Maryland) to aggregate and synthesize data.

it really will change the way we interact with data on a daily-basis I think.

The things that could be done are endless. Imagine how amazing this will be for historic moments in time? As this is a sports board, imagine being able to search the net for all of the still photos of Jordan's foul, then shot against the Jazz.

We could have a panoramic view of the entire event in seconds. This is truly stunning.

[Radii]

I'm glad to see some people as blown away by this as I was, I shared this with a couple friends earlier in the week and got no response and was pretty disappointed. This is just astounding stuff.

[Anthony]

this seems like it's copying off the technology found in the game Spore. the ultra zooming in, the ultra zooming out, being able to manipulate the graphics in front of you. i like it though, it looks like the next evolution in technology.

[Yossarian]

reminds be of the technology in the movie Deja Vu - before they tell the guy what it REALLY is, they say it comes from lots of satellites etc...

This proves it COULD happen (if you had hunners of photos of people's houses for no good reason..)

[Antmeister]

Originally Posted by TroyF

The things that could be done are endless. Imagine how amazing this will be for historic moments in time? As this is a sports board, imagine being able to search the net for all of the still photos of Jordan's foul, then shot against the Jazz.

We could have a panoramic view of the entire event in seconds. This is truly stunning.

Oh man, that would be the bestest thing ever!

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Antmeister

Oh man, that would be the bestest thing ever!

maradona's "hand of god" goal

kennedy's assasination

outer space

any of the "great places" to visit in the world

[BrianD]

I wonder how this technology would work with single moments in time, or with reconstruction of an event. Recognizing static images to create a panorama and showing the slow movement of a rock climber is one thing, but collecting images of a single event viewed by people surrounding the event is something else. I'd be curious of just how many photos would be needed to give enough context.

[Wolfpack]

Originally Posted by BrianD

I wonder how this technology would work with single moments in time, or with reconstruction of an event. Recognizing static images to create a panorama and showing the slow movement of a rock climber is one thing, but collecting images of a single event viewed by people surrounding the event is something else. I'd be curious of just how many photos would be needed to give enough context.

I think the inherent limitation of capturing a "moment" is the fact that almost no one will be zoomed in to a very particular spot that many people might be curious about. Taking for example the Jordan push/shot, everyone might look for that particular location where Jordan had his hand out, but no one will have definitively photographed that specific area of the event. Instead, just about every shot will be of the entire half-court, or at best somewhere in the vicinity of Jordan himself. Something like this you are almost never going to get the specific spot because it's an action shot that is moving very quickly.

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by Wolfpack

I think the inherent limitation of capturing a "moment" is the fact that almost no one will be zoomed in to a very particular spot that many people might be curious about. Taking for example the Jordan push/shot, everyone might look for that particular location where Jordan had his hand out, but no one will have definitively photographed that specific area of the event. Instead, just about every shot will be of the entire half-court, or at best somewhere in the vicinity of Jordan himself. Something like this you are almost never going to get the specific spot because it's an action shot that is moving very quickly.

It really all depends on the amount of photos you are looking at. yeah, maybe a spot would be difficult to see at times, but you have professional photogs all around the court. Their pics combined with any amateur out there snapping shots will give us things we've never seen before.

And imagine if the technology is ever able to advance to where you could use video? Then the possibilities are truly endless for how this could be used.