I came across this of one of the Microsoft Research projects. It gets interesting around the middle and towards the end when the speaker starts talking about Notre Dame.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

That is fascinating, unfortunately MS is once again taking credit were it is not due. I would estimate 90-95% of what he talks about we have been using in Photogrammetry, mapping and GIS for close to 15 years. And they had nothing to do with its developement. Quite literally 0.(note how he snakes away from its applications in mapping and aerial imaging) hmmmmmmm Still very interesting. Thanks for posting.

Umm, this demo is about SeaDragon and Photosynth, not about photogrammetry, mapping, or GIS. Watch the middle to the end.. that's where it gets interesting ;-)

Excellent piece of software, but I have to agree with Kestrel.... Notice at the top of the video, the speaker mentions "some new technology that we brought to Microsoft as part of an acquisition".

I like how they word that.  I wonder who the original geniuses are behind it who sold out to the big MS.

I like the way he says "some new technology that we brought" more like "We Bought" and he's been brainwashed already, with all that excitement about loving to work for Microsoft.

As you can tell I'm not  a big fan of Corporations and how they brainwash their employees.

Quote - Umm, this demo is about SeaDragon and Photosynth, not about photogrammetry, mapping, or GIS. Watch the middle to the end.. that's where it gets interesting ;-)

I agree d_a_m and did watch to the end. My point is that what he shows is all existing tech that was developed in other fields by other companies. Most notable from my personal experience being the above mentioned. However as stated earlier, still interesting and worth a watch.

The company that sold out was Seadragon which used to be at seadragon.net.

What I found interesting was how the system was putting together a picture of Notre Dame based on other pictures. supposingly on the fly. I didn't get that part too well until later. Linking other pictures based on the header data they have makes me wonder about embedding linkable data into digital cameras of the future.

Must admit even as a microsoft anti-fan ;) I found the demo quite impressive (i.e. after watching the vid I went to the seadragon project, d/loaded the web client and had a play, pretty impressive stuff)

Hrm, Gog, thanks for the hint.. I wasn't aware the projects are available. Will check that out.

Now my brain is thinking. Someone at the TED site suggested NASA and others put all their photos into this metabase and navigate from galaxies all the way down to an atom. Now I'm wondering how else such a system could be used.

yes this fotosynth is great stuff. dled the viewer also

I wonder what kind of hardware the demo was being shown on... everything looked very fluid.

it works on my 3.0 ghz quite good.