# Photosynth Technology Preview **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 2, 2007, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photosynth-technology-preview/406483 "2007-06-02T15:07:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photosynth-technology-preview/406483/1 "2007-06-02T15:07:04Z")
Holy crap. It takes a lot to impress me technologically. I’ve lived through the history of computers and have pretty much seen it all, so the latest improvements and tweaks in technology, while cool and can make me go “Wow,” don’t really impress me to a large degree because it’s just an improvement on stuff I’ve already seen. But this … this is one of those “holy mother of Og’s balls” things. Imagine taking a large collection of photos from one place, analyzing them all for similarities, and reconstructing them in a kind of 3D space and then presenting that 3D space to the user to click around and zoom in and such using these real photos. That’s Photosynth. and Microsoft have finally released a [technology preview](http://labs.live.com/photosynth/) of it. (Plugin required; works well in IE and FireFox) Here’s a [video](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129) of it in action. This is pretty damn impressive. The art gallery is particularly cool; a bunch of the paintings shown in it were photographed at 80(!) megapixels, so you can zoom right into them and see the texture of the canvas. Incredible. I’m really interested in seeing what the future of this technology brings. Photosynthesis of every place of interest on Earth. Then imagine combining that with a Google Earth-like technology. :eek: By the way, see if you can find Stephen Hawking in the Piazza San Marco. ---
**Author:** ![Sapo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@Sapo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sapo)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photosynth-technology-preview/406483/2 "2007-06-02T16:52:45Z")
Very, very impressive. I heard of this a while ago and thought it was cool. Seeing it in action is simply awesome. Can’t wait for the ability to see places evolve in time via composite of different pics of the same place taken over the years. ---
**Author:** ![KlondikeGeoff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3e96dc/32.png) [@KlondikeGeoff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KlondikeGeoff)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photosynth-technology-preview/406483/3 "2007-06-02T21:02:16Z")
Thanks! Yeah, that really does have the wow! factor. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2007, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photosynth-technology-preview/406483/4 "2007-06-03T03:23:44Z")
It only runs on XP SP2 or Vista. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2007, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photosynth-technology-preview/406483/5 "2007-06-03T03:36:02Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace] It only runs on XP SP2 or Vista. ☹ [/QUOTE] You just went Mac, didn’t you? Are you running Firefox? Do FF extensions for the PC version work on the Mac? (I’m pretty Mac-illiterate) Well, you should be able to see the video, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2007, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photosynth-technology-preview/406483/6 "2007-06-03T04:03:52Z")
[QUOTE=Mindfield] You just went Mac, didn’t you? Are you running Firefox? Do FF extensions for the PC version work on the Mac? (I’m pretty Mac-illiterate) Well, you should be able to see the video, anyway. [/QUOTE] FF extensions are platform-independent… I think. But I could be very wrong about that. Yes, I just went Mac. Intel Mac, so I have the capability to dual-boot XP/Vusta and run it under Parallels if I need to. I just went looking for the setting that lets you change what FF reports itself as to web servers, and didn’t find it. It’s probably in the Advanced settings, the ones that you have to type in… You’d think that if MS wants to draw people from other platforms back to Windows, they’d make their hopeful-killer-app demos platform-independent? But nooo… ---
**Author:** ![Aioua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@Aioua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aioua)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2007, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photosynth-technology-preview/406483/7 "2007-06-03T04:06:18Z")
ooOOoo… a blank grey screen… what am I doing wrong? I installed the plugin in FF, i’m using a PC, I got good intarwebs… ---
**Author:** ![Aioua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@Aioua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aioua)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2007, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photosynth-technology-preview/406483/8 "2007-06-03T04:41:09Z")
[QUOTE=Aioua] ooOOoo… a blank grey screen… what am I doing wrong? I installed the plugin in FF, i’m using a PC, I got good intarwebs… [/QUOTE] Oh.. roight. my smeppy graphics card…