Friday, August 22, 2008

Photosynth: Multi-Dimensional Digital Imaging

Recently Microsoft released the final version of its long-in-beta web app called Photosynth.

Photosynth gives users the ability to view and create 3D Panoramas and virtual tours. Basically it takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs the scene or object in a 3-D environment.

Photosynth is potent mixture of two independent breakthroughs: the ability to reconstruct the scene or object from a bunch of flat photographs, and the technology to bring that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet.

The Photosynth viewer allows user to zoom in/out, view in 3D/2D and circle through next and previous frames. Below you can see some screenshots of 3D panoramas of Taj Mahal, Smith Tower and the Sphinx.


View Taj Mahal


View Smith Tower


View Sphinx

Apart from providing a library of 3D Panoramas for users to explore, Photosynth lets users create their own Synth and upload them for others to view in 3D.

It is a Microsoft Labs product so don’t expect it to bug-you-not. To get started with viewing or creating your own 3D Panoramas, hop on to Photosynth and enjoy the tour.

It is currently available only to Windows users.