This is really impressive, and I can see it being useful for a lot of people - the GoPro crowd, and people selling uncommon things on eBay or Etsy come to mind.
Play the "walk" photosynth of the motorcycle in the alley, then press C and move around to see how the 3d model of the reflection in the puddle is a surface far underground where the reflected building appears to be! So cool! http://photosynth.net/preview/about
Also very impressed here. However, it appears to have a huge limitation over the previous implementation: You can only move in a linear fashion though the scene. Gone is the ability to jump around in a 3D environment. At least from the first handful of examples I looked at.
Does anyone see an environment in this new version that still allows freedom of movement?
It's my understanding that you can't use them simultaneously. You have to choose one of the types: spin, panorama, walk, or wall. (http://photosynth.net/preview/about)
In the previous version, random pictures around a scene could be stitched together allowing an experience you could explore. For example, one of the original, popular photosynths allowed you to explore inside an art studio. You could look up at the ceiling, walk on various paths, move close into pictures, etc. In this new version, you're stuck on rails.
tl;dr: In this version each node has two exit points: next or previous picture. In the previous version each node had an unlimited number of exit points to other pictures.
Thanks for the tip! But this allows you to move your perspective outside of the rail system, but doesn't change the fact that you only have images established on the rail system itself.
My guess is that they are optimizing for smartphone use cases: ie record a quick video instead of stitching together photos from lots of different folks. Using linear video as an input means you have knowledge you didn't have before: successive shots must be taken from a relatively close position and direction.
The technology is clearly deeply related to the more freeform movement variants of the past. It's likely that even better freeform movement can be stitched together from a collection of linear videos than could be from a collection of stills in the past. I wouldn't be surprised if we see that start to happen soon.
This isn't really about 3D reconstruction (there exists better solutions for that already, see http://vimeo.com/61625715) rather it seems that it's more about stitching consecutive photos together. If you press C in the demo you'll see that it appears to create different 3D geometry for every photo. This approach allows movement in the scene.
This would be interesting to see with StreetView photos or with Microsoft's equivalent. Imagine virtually driving to your destination before starting out there, will help with the confusing turns etc.
Now imagine doing it on your smartphone mounted as a GPS while you drive, will make driving even more easier.
I'm sure I'm missing something with this particular one, and I'm sure it's got a lot of clever tech behind it, but is the end result actually achieving anything more than a simple video of the same walk?
It is impressive. But, I have to wonder: what does this get you above-and-beyond taking a short video of an object, and then allowing the view to "scrub" back and forth within the video?
One thing that's illustrated in the demos is that you can zoom into detail in the photosynth images that you couldn't in a video.
I imagine there could eventually be better interactivity with the underlying 3D model than video could provide. Certain surfaces could be links to more information or another photosynth, for example. It kind of reminds me of some of the VRML demos from the 90s, but without the plugins and working backwards from photos instead of forward from models.
Photosynth collages can be created by stitching together a lot of disparate photos. So you can have a 3D, interactive representation of, say, Trafalgar Square, created from photos available on Flickr.
I remember it used to seriously limit the resolution of the pictures though. You'd stitch together lots of high-res photos and yet the app would merge them into a low-res output. I wonder if they ever changed that?
If I remember correctly, that only occurred if the panorama was extremely wide or extremely tall in aspect ratio. I think it had a limit for the maximum dimension. But I remember exporting approximately 4:3 panoramas that were quite large.
Well, Ballmer's gone. So maybe they will figure out how to pull together their innovation. It is kind of deflating sometimes to realize that MS was doing something that they simply dropped the ball on. The smart phone is solidly one of those things. They dominated the PDA market prior to the iPhone coming out. All they had to do was put some focus towards it.
Looks to me like this version of Photosynth doesn't let you look around like old versions did however and seems to follow a fixed path with fixed camera angle?
I guess the Oculus would improve the 3D aspect of it but you wouldn't be able to look around left and right while traveling.
I think it could do with a little bit of information on the first page to tell you what it actually is. If it was not a highly voted link from HN I'd most likely not bothered to actually figure out what it is.
Also in Chrome canary it frequently crashed the tab or gives the "WebGL hit a snag" message, which requires you to click reload before the site works properly again.
Edit: Why is this been downvoted? All you get on the first page is a large photograph and a circle with more photos. Until you click a photo, or learn more, it is not clear what the site is about...
Also, think I'm missing something because I just get a HTML5 video of a scene.
It's not a complaint and it might equally be a problem with Chrome Canary itself and have zero to do with the site.
However, I'd personally find it useful to know if my project was working in pre-release browsers, especially if it is more than your basic web app, to ensure future compatibility before that pre-release version makes it out as a stable version.
You've been downvoted because your criticism is unwarranted. On the front page, there is a large link "Learn more" to a page that very clearly explains what PhotoSynth is. There's also a menu with similar info.
That's not my point though, I'm talking about what you see when you visit for the first time.
If you visit the site for the first time, like I just have, you have no idea what it is. You are just looking at a large image with some additional photos in circles. Just a simple phrase, such as the first line from the Learn More page: "Capture [and view] the places you love in amazing resolution and full 3D.", and perhaps a "Try it, select a scene" on near the circles would make it much more obvious.
Or perhaps even better, when you visit for the time time give them a quick demo or walk through.
Amazing stuff, and much nicer without the Silverlight requirement!
There are still some strange artefacts remaining, though. For example, on this demo - http://photosynth.net/preview/view/c7287786-a863-4291-a291-d... - watch the bases of the dragons as the camera pans left to right. The first two seem to stitch together fine, but the last two go wrong and bend outwards as if they are moving in the wrong direction. It's strange because other parts of the scene are perfect.
Geez, Google, you've limited my passwords to 200 characters. What gives? Microsoft allows passphrases with SAML... though at that point (>200) it might be pass-paragraphs.
I know this is a joke, but allowing arbitrarily long passwords allow a DOS attack if your server uses bcrypt or similar (consider uploading a 1GB password, for example)
Good point. You need to draw the line somewhere. I wrote about 200 character limit Google uses because I hit it the other day. I wondered, but that makes sense. Wouldn't surprise me if they also took networking into consideration too.
I registered, verified my e-mail, but then I opened the page and clicked the create button, I succesfully uploaded my synth, just waiting it to be preprocessed. Not sure, but it might be a way to pass the waiting for invitation.
I liked the idea, I think it's a different (not better nor worse) to explore imagery. I even found it's more intimate in some ways... like discovering some details of the images.
In addition to being an impressive demo, the type and range of experiences represented in these is interesting. After some random clicking, I saw a:
- walkthrough of a wealth manager's office
- boat cruising around a marina
- a walk through an exclusive shopping district with an Hermes and Louis Vuitton.
- a duomo in Florence.
That talk was was a lot of fun to watch. And the first half of that technology in the talk, Deep Zoom, is now open source: http://openseadragon.github.io/
92 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 151 ms ] threadInteresting tech, but that's a real pity.
When in the viewer, press C to see the 3D interpretation of individual shots and M for a map of the path taken by the camera.
Does anyone see an environment in this new version that still allows freedom of movement?
In the previous version, random pictures around a scene could be stitched together allowing an experience you could explore. For example, one of the original, popular photosynths allowed you to explore inside an art studio. You could look up at the ceiling, walk on various paths, move close into pictures, etc. In this new version, you're stuck on rails.
tl;dr: In this version each node has two exit points: next or previous picture. In the previous version each node had an unlimited number of exit points to other pictures.
The technology is clearly deeply related to the more freeform movement variants of the past. It's likely that even better freeform movement can be stitched together from a collection of linear videos than could be from a collection of stills in the past. I wouldn't be surprised if we see that start to happen soon.
Now imagine doing it on your smartphone mounted as a GPS while you drive, will make driving even more easier.
I imagine there could eventually be better interactivity with the underlying 3D model than video could provide. Certain surfaces could be links to more information or another photosynth, for example. It kind of reminds me of some of the VRML demos from the 90s, but without the plugins and working backwards from photos instead of forward from models.
A nice reminder that Microsoft really does have some great engineering talent and they can break new ground.
I guess the Oculus would improve the 3D aspect of it but you wouldn't be able to look around left and right while traveling.
Also in Chrome canary it frequently crashed the tab or gives the "WebGL hit a snag" message, which requires you to click reload before the site works properly again.
Edit: Why is this been downvoted? All you get on the first page is a large photograph and a circle with more photos. Until you click a photo, or learn more, it is not clear what the site is about...
Also, think I'm missing something because I just get a HTML5 video of a scene.
However, I'd personally find it useful to know if my project was working in pre-release browsers, especially if it is more than your basic web app, to ensure future compatibility before that pre-release version makes it out as a stable version.
If you visit the site for the first time, like I just have, you have no idea what it is. You are just looking at a large image with some additional photos in circles. Just a simple phrase, such as the first line from the Learn More page: "Capture [and view] the places you love in amazing resolution and full 3D.", and perhaps a "Try it, select a scene" on near the circles would make it much more obvious.
Or perhaps even better, when you visit for the time time give them a quick demo or walk through.
There are still some strange artefacts remaining, though. For example, on this demo - http://photosynth.net/preview/view/c7287786-a863-4291-a291-d... - watch the bases of the dragons as the camera pans left to right. The first two seem to stitch together fine, but the last two go wrong and bend outwards as if they are moving in the wrong direction. It's strange because other parts of the scene are perfect.
multiple photos: http://www.123dapp.com/catch
Single photo: http://make3d.cs.cornell.edu/ http://www.3defy.com/ and http://hackaday.com/2013/09/12/3-sweep-turning-2d-images-int...
video: http://www.3ders.org/articles/20130729-disney-new-image-algo... and http://punchcard.com.au/