Comments

fldave wrote on 6/12/2007, 6:12 PM
The flashing transitions bothered me, but I think they could smooth that out.

Here is the kicker...

The way I understand how this works is that the program "borrows for free" images throughout the internet and loads them into a positional/multidimensional array. This new software simply navigates the 3D positions based on your navigational input.

It is very cool and very functional. Will I be compensated for Microsoft's use of my images? Or if a $billion corporation uses my images to find some new algorithms, monetary uses, etc.

One more reason not to post my family vacation pictures/videos on the internet for MSFT to find and use for free?
apit34356 wrote on 6/12/2007, 6:41 PM
Seadragon compression to vectors is what's impressive for "live" use.
farss wrote on 6/12/2007, 6:46 PM
Will I be compensated for Microsoft's use of my images? Or if a $billion corporation uses my images to find some new algorithms, monetary uses, etc.

Ah actually it's other users of the program that benefit from your images as you would benefit from theirs. As for anyone using your images to develop a new algorithm, I think they could pretty cheaply go take their own for the purpose of developing / testing their code.
The algorithms have been around for quite a while anyway, what's new here is using a web crawler that's image savvy.

Anyways I'm off to cover my home with camo netting, wouldn't want Google using the image of my home for free.

Bob.
fldave wrote on 6/12/2007, 7:33 PM
"Ah actually it's other users of the program that benefit from your images as you would benefit from theirs."

That's my point. If I don't use that program, then I don't benefit from other's images.

They implied that the program scours the entire web for available images. I didn't hear mention of an "opt-in" program to supply images for use.

If there is huge repository where you send your photos to include, then I don't have any problem with that.
bStro wrote on 6/12/2007, 8:11 PM
Best as I can tell, the app works with a collection of photos that you yourself have uploaded or a collection that someone has shared with you. I see nothing on the Photosynth site about it "borrowing" images from the internet.

What is Photosynth?

FAQ

Rob
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/12/2007, 8:57 PM
hmm..... i'd be more impressed if I could try it with images I had on hand instead of ones that MS already provided. A lot to ask but that's the only way I'll know if it's really usefull or needs tons of great shots to be any use.

Looks a lot like competition to google earth's 3d view.
farss wrote on 6/12/2007, 9:12 PM
Just watching The Making of Photosynth video on the same site gets me a bit excited. Zooming into an image that'd normally require terrabytes of storage, can see a lot of use for that, HUGE pans and zooms in Vegas .

But even more interesting is being able to derive camera position, focal length etc. This would make building virtual 3D sets a snap without expensive kit. There's some new tech out there that lets you do this with a greescreen shoot without motion capture / control. If M$ can bring this into our reach that's going to open up a few possibilites for all of us.

Bob.
fldave wrote on 6/12/2007, 9:32 PM
Sorry, but I thought the guy in the video kept emphasizing that it would "go out to the internet to get all these pictures of the same place your were focusing on".

I'll listen again to look for the emphasis
Jay Gladwell wrote on 6/13/2007, 4:04 AM

Dave, hopefully, in time, that technology will allow editors to do the same thing in projects they're creating.

It has to start somewhere.


fldave wrote on 6/13/2007, 5:23 AM
OK, he specifically said "built by a crawler searching the whole web"

It is very cool, though.

Not to rain on the parade, but I still stand by my earlier comments.

What is the difference between me "borrowing" a ZZ Top song for my video, and some company(s) borrowing my vacation pictures for their work, with no compensation either way?
farss wrote on 6/13/2007, 6:11 AM
What is the difference between me "borrowing" a ZZ Top song for my video, and some company(s) borrowing my vacation pictures for their work, with no compensation either way?

Because you'd be using someone elses work in your product.
Microsoft will no be using your images in their product.
You can use ZZ Top's music for research, you can't put it into your product.
This tool that Micorsoft is developing is not really much different than any search engine except it can create relationships based on very clever image analysis.
The one exception to all this is it seems they also plan to use it to develop enhanced data for Live Earth, to built virtual cities from 1000s if not millions of images posted on the web that a crawler analyses. That's going to involve a staggering amount of computation I'd imagine. So in this case yes, I guess they are creating something out of "our" work but it's temporary in nature and not a product as such and I suspect the issue of copyright would be pretty grey. At the moment you post an image and anyone can view it, they could display it in many ways, even join it to other images and I don't see an issue. Print the composite out and then you're in trouble I guess.

Let me put it another way, it'll be one thing for Microsoft to make this work on a large scale, that's still years away. Then they have to get a lot of eyeballs looking at it and then they have to find a way to monetise those eyeballs before they've turned a dime out of your photos. Personally I'd be more than happy to even go shoot some stills for free to help this kind of research along, just as I'd gladly give blood to aid medical research even if it means some company will make a huge profit if that blood leads to a cure for something.

Bob.
xberk wrote on 6/18/2007, 4:50 PM
I don't get this at all. If we find a thousand images of Yankee Stadium on the internet, does this software paste them into a virtual reality that we can then navigate, up, down. left and right? So what.

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

Laurence wrote on 6/19/2007, 9:18 PM
I believe that in the video, while it was suggested that Photosynth could work with pictures gathered by a web crawler, that all the actual pictures in the demo looked like they had been captured around the same time specifically for the the Photosynth project. Really cool technology none-the-less.
epirb wrote on 6/20/2007, 7:04 AM
Too funny ! just watched the movie Deja VU w/ Denzel Washington where they could go back in time extactly 48hrs on a huge video monitor and move teh camera around anywhere they wanted.
Even though in the movie it was supposed to be a time machine of sorts they treid to explain to Denzel's charachter that it was done by a supercomputer compiling the images from combining hi res satelite cameras,thermal imaging, security cameras etc. etc..in the area.
the concept was interesting the movie fell flat, but it was what i thought of when i saw this.