iSynth (iTunes Link) is a new application that brings Microsoft’s impressive Photosynth 3D photo viewer to the iPhone. Photosynth stitches together user-submitted photos of the same subject, allowing users to ‘fly-through’ the area by clicking on each successive photo. The technology works best in places and events with many user-submitted photos (popular Synths include the Taj Mahal and President Obama’s inauguration). The site is very fun and often gorgeous, and is certainly worth checking out if you haven’t seen it before.
iSynth brings much of the functionality of the original Photosynth to the iPhone, and for the most part it works well. In fact, the touch-screen interface makes the experience even more intuitive than the original – tapping on the screen causes the app to zoom in on the highlighted photo, shifting the viewer’s position in the 3D scene. Unfortunately, because the iPhone’s screen is so much smaller than a computer monitor the feeling of ‘walking through’ each scene isn’t quite as good as it is on the original application, but it’s still fun nonetheless. And the application is perfectly suited for those moments when you just need to kill time for a few minutes – just fire up the app and take a virtual stroll around the Taj Mahal.
The free iPhone application was developed by Greg Pascale, a former Photosynth intern who received permission to build the app from Microsoft (though Microsoft didn’t build the application and does not support it). Also worth checking out is Microsoft’s Seadragon Mobile (iTunes link), which allows users to flick through large albums of high-resolution photography, including 2D versions of albums from its Photosynth product.
Thanks to Kyle Mulka for the tip.
For anyone who says innovation at Microsoft is dead, I say take a look at the Photosynth demo. Now that Microsoft is actually the underdog in many areas such as the web, music, games, and the like, the pressure to truly innovate seems to be finally taking hold.
Photosynth really rocks.
Anjali Sen
Photosynth is really kool, it was useful during the inauguration on CNN
For anyone who says anjali is sane is dead, I say take a look at her spams demo. Now that she is actually recognised by everyone here at TC the underbitch in many areas such as the crap,spam,insanity knows how to truly irritate seems to be finally taking hold.
retard babe really sucks.
Anjali Sen
Wow, what a announcement.
1. Has Microsoft acknowledged that iPhone beaten Windows Mobile into another massive-inventory problem for ISP’s?
2. Amazing that the compute intensive Photosynth can reside on the iPhone. Must be using the graphics processor of the iPhone, direct.
3. Still don’t get Photosynth. Is it a technology in search of a problem? How often do they get multiple photo streams aside from major live events?
Photosynth is an application of a technology that does not really exist yet outside of toy forms because the algorithms to make it scale do not exist.
Photosynth is ultimately a simple, limited example of what would be possible if large-scale reality mining was tractable.
Photosynth is a project that came out of basic research; it’s a technology that can be improved and leveraged to solve problems that are completely impossible today.
The problem it’s trying to solve is that we don’t have a good way to look at a collection of related photos: we look at them one by one. WIth photosynth, the computer stitches them together and you get a much better view of collection. Unfortunately, right now, the viewing is still kind of clunky, the images are stitched but effectively you see one photo at a time and it’s not very intuitive how to navigate from photo to photo. Imagine if they could figure out a way to turn the point cloud (the features they use to match up the photos) into a rudimentary mesh and use the photos as texture maps. Now you take a collection of photos and the result you get is a 3-D world you can move around in. There are so many practical applications that could take advantage of this. Photosynth is a huge stepping stone in making this happen and it’s no secret that people are working on this.
In the mean time, stop being so negative, sit back and be impressed by how far computer vision has gone. If that doesn’t interest go away and let other people enjoy it.
What’s interesting about this is, if I’m not mistaken, Photosynth and Silverlight have very similar architecture. If it’s this easy to create a photosynth “browser/program” for the iPod, wouldn’t you think it would be just as easy to have one for Silverlight.
Just a thought. I could be wrong though.
What the hell are you talking about. Silverlight is a development platform for the web. Photosynth is an application based off of Seadragon. Photosynth has been ADDED to Silverlight already.
Photosynth , wow- way to go Microsoft….
Actually, photosynth viewer is included with Silverlight. You have to compile your photos using a stand alone application, but once that is done you can view them in Silverlight viewer, or a high performance windows viewer.
PhotoSynth is great technology. Well done.
@DJ – you are a jaded man.
Better hide the little bastard!
Nice article! Check out my site too at http://macmaniapodcast.com
This application is really worth checking out. The photos from the Taj Mahal are breathtaking and show how good this application can be.
Sexy Babes said…
For anyone who says innovation at Microsoft is dead…
I find such comment usually come from people who don’t know anything at all about how those software titans (IBM, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, etc…) conduct their R&Ds. There are heaps of such commentaries here at TC. Some say that Google is doom, Microsoft is heading towards oblivion, Yahoo have no clue about online ads, Twitter search engine is awesome & it will overtake Google in the next year or so and blah, blah, blah.
What they’re forgetting is that those software titans do know everything and anything about software, since they do have various dedicated R&D teams that do nothing all day except doing original research to find out or invent new things. When one starts digging into the research publications of those titans, it should be obvious that there isn’t any rock that has been left unturned in almost every topic related to software. If they haven’t come up with a product in a specific area, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have a clue about it, perhaps it might be a managerial decision not to and it is highly likely that one can find some R&D work that has been done & published in that specific area.
One R&D group that I am impressed with at Microsoft Research China is the Web Search & Mining group. Their publications is outstanding, one just have to check out some of the topics in their selected publications which are freely available from their site. I had implemented some algorithms that appeared in Microsoft research publications in the past and communicating with the authors of those papers requesting clarifications on their algorithm were very pleasant. They’re very helpful. You ask a question about their papers, they will respond back to you. They (Microsoft) will help anyone who is interested to implement their published algorithm, such as describing the derivation more clearly, (since reading someone’s paper doesn’t automatically make it clear of how it is to be implemented) checking your code for its correctness, etc.
I think that it was a good move for Microsoft to establish an R&D division in Asia to tap in to the brains over there. I see that Google has now established an R&D division there (China) as well.
One thing that I have noted and that is, there are more algorithms that have been published by Microsoft researchers than they have implemented into their products. I don’t know why.
This is way cool!
test
Hey guys, if you like this app, post how much you would have been willing to pay for it, had the author not made it free. I think it’s great it’s free, but it’d be cool for the author to have some data on how much he could be making, so he’ll write more apps hopefully!
I’d pay $2.
Good point timothy john o’donnell! You’re hardly a nameless denizen!
I’d pay up to 3 dollars for this iPhone application!
Hey, you clearly know me, but I can’t put a face to your name. who are you?
Tim
great for Microsoft!
I headed up Product Management and Business Development in the early days of Live Labs and really happy to see the technology continue to grow momentum in the marketplace.
You can read more about our take on it http://8ninths.com/?p=954
and if you’re interested in incorporating synths into your own online experiences contact us at http://www.adam...ard.org/synths/
Thanks
Adam.
Am I the only one who played with this toy for a couple days and then got bored with it?
It’s not really that useful and it gets boring real quick.
Way over hyped for something that has no real life application. Is there some part of life this makes more efficient that I just don’t see?
So… this is actually a post about Greg Pascale, not Microsoft.
Anyway… downloaded and played with it. Yep, fun for about 3 minutes.
@lazysupper
So what? It’s awesome and he did a good job and this tool is clearly useful, who needs to read another article about Microsoft?
Umm, not sure what did you expect? It’s a viewer. Used to view photosynths. If you create them yourself you can show them to other people while away from your PC. If you want to see what did other people upload you can. That’s the sole purpose of the app. Not boring, just functional.
Check out a video of iSynth here: http://www.yout...h?v=Swozuf2dtS0
Got’you. You mean that idiotic spammer “From India” right?
so its agreed then