PhotoSynth (Microsoft's Got Groove!)

For the last few years, it had seemed that Microsoft's has lost what's left of its zeal with the fiasco of Vista and numerous plans to at once salvage what they can from that terribly broken system(SPs anyone?) and to, against all rationality, "improve" the Vista system by completely failing at integrating various features(lol "Are you sure you want to_____?" message boxes) and softwares(Live everything, except for even the slightest chance for success) into its cruddy Vista OS.

For the last time, I am DAMNED SURE that I want the goddamned file to be moved the recycle bin!

However, despite Microsoft's shortcomings during the Vista era, it seems that somewhere along the way Microsoft has finally discovered its inner zeal. This ofcourse would be puntuacted by the tremendous success of Windows 7, but this article, like its title suggest is not about Microsoft's newest money grabbing flagship, but rather a software that appeared during the same year of Blackcomb was renamed Windows 7. This is software, the Photosynth, is Microsoft's new and much groovier approach to personal computing.

Photosynth is a software that allow you to create 3D environment simply by providing the program with a sufficient amount of overlapping pictures taken from a single point of view. In other words, all the user have to do is stand in one place, take pictures of the surrounding environment and the rest of the work is done by the program, which will analyze the pictures for edges and recreate a 360 view of the entire area. This innovative way of viewing pictures not only allow the artist to show more than just one part of a whole, but also it may also technically allow truly 3D films to be constructed and shown in real time. As of now, it already has the ability to zoom into a certain object within a whole panorama and rotate around it independently to allow for a truly 3D view of, well technically, any given object within the scene, really.

Enough talk, since if one picture is worth a thousand words, I'm sure that the 205 pictures that make up the world in the link below will do a much better job at explaining potentials of the Photosynth.

Enjoy the show.