Slashgeo

The TechCrunch blog has a story up along with video detailing the most photo realistic virtual world i've seen yet so far. Just another virtual world story you say, however the claim is it will run in web browsers (with no plugin) and even on mobile devices at photo realistic quality with full user control. This is all thanks to the beauty of server side 3D rendering (cloud computing). From their article : "The video shows a massive virtual city filled with towering skyscrapers, parks, user-customized apartments and houses, public meeting places, subways, and everything else you might expect in a metropolitan area, all beautifully rendered by the OTOY engine. The game also features impressive real time lighting, reflection, and weather effects that rival those seen in detailed 3D games (and even some movies)."

There was an article on CNET yesterday detailing the work done with Photosynth. : "Microsoft's Photosynth is an impressive tool for stitching together dozens of photos to allow a place or event to be viewed from multiple angles.

The only hard part is it really takes 75 photos or more to get the optimal experience. That's a lot of work for one photographer. But, with big events, one can also rely on crowdsourcing. Which is what CNN has done with the inaugural, asking viewers to send in their photos of Barack Obama's swearing in.

The resulting Photosynth is pretty cool. (It requires Silverlight for viewing.) "

Microsoft announced you can now search for Photosynth photos directly in Virtual Earth. From the entry: "In the welcome pane, you’ll see a link for “Explore Collections” which you click and begin seeing all kinds of collections. You can then improve your search using a helpful toolbar based on tags, collections with photos, collections with 3D models, collections with MapCruncher layers, and collections with Photosynths! Additionally, you can sort these by relevance (if you input a search term), distance from the center of the map, date added and last updated. Click the Photosynth button and you’ll see a search result list of Photosynth collections." Some related Photosynth stories below. Photosynth.net requires MS Windows.

Yesterday Microsoft announced GeoSynth. From the press release [scroll previous link to the bottom of the entry]: "GeoSynth, currently a standalone application, is comprised of a Viewer and Collection Builder which provides the same incredible capabilities as Photosynth. Users who require offline processing, storage and access of Synths will now be able to use GeoSynth behind their firewalls, on private or classified networks, and on portable platforms. Ongoing development will permit standard geo-tagged photos to be used as input and allow generation of geodetically referenced 3D Synths which can be quantitatively analyzed and combined with other geospatial products. Accurate geo-positioning, using rigorous photogrammetric methodologies, is a fundamental objective of GeoSynth." See also our previous PhotoSynth stories below.

From the GeoPDF blog : "Microsoft finally released Photosynth to the general public. This is a long awaited release for this very cool 3-D panorama creation solution. I have fooled around with OpenPhotoVR but did not have the time or patience to get it working properly. Photosynth will "synth" your world for you! Check out the Photosynth gallery to see all the cool scenes already in the archive. Be careful when you create your own...your photos will be publicly available."