Photosynth released as public browser plugin
Written by Josh on Thursday, August 21st, 2008
Forget Aero, forget the iPhone and and forget multi-touch technology… Photosynth is hands-down the coolest end-user product I’ve seen in years.
I say that because amazing prototypes and services come out of companies and research labs on a regular basis, but all too often they never reach the light of day again… or if they do it’s ten years down the track.
Perhaps the most amazing thing is that Photosynth supports Internet Explorer, Firefox 3 and Flock 2.
In case you weren’t aware, Photosynth is a technology which can stitch digital images together to create a fully 3D environment from your images. The Tech Preview impressed us for a while, but we knew the real fun wouldn’t start till we could create our own Photosynths from our own images.
Photosynth installs two programs on your computer: a Web browser plug-in for viewing synths, and an application (called "Photosynth") for creating them. Clicking the Install Photosynth button below will install both of them. When it’s done your computer will be ready for both viewing and creating synths.
Using Photosynth requires 2 things; a Windows Live user account (which I’m sure you have) and the Photosynth installer which installs both the browser plugin and the desktop software.
I was kind of lacking in any kind of photosynthic appropriate photos (you’ll need about 10-20 photos from the same area) so I had to make do with simply taking multiple photographs of my room. Not exciting, but I wanted to test the service.
You can see from the screenshot above what the desktop software looks like. Simple and easy to use… just add photos and publish.
Strangely, you can add various Copyright licenses to your Photosynth if you so desire, perhaps because there are no privacy controls… all of your uploads can be seen by anyone.
With a 20 gigabyte upload limit you should have no trouble uploading as many photographs as you want. The biggest question I have however is, why can’t Live Mesh be given 20 gigabytes too?! I sure need it.
After you’ve created and uploaded your Photosynth you’ll be given a ‘synthy’ score based on how good your selection of photographs was to create a 3D environment. I got ‘71% synthy’ and you can check it out below:
It’s a fantastic application, definitely recommend trying it out!
Tags: Microsoft, plugin
Posted in Browsers, Firefox, Images, Internet Explorer, Media
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August 21, 2008 at 11:42 am
[...] Original post by Josh [...]