Photographically capturing the WORLD!
This is Part 3 of this series. (At least I didn’t pull a Lucas and start with part 4.)
Let’s compare technical characteristics/requirements as I’ve mentioned in Part 1 (and pls read Part 2 as well).
- scalable
- distributable
- maintainable
- extensible
Again, there may be more and these are not orthogonal or exclusive of each other.
Scalability
Now, remember that the context in which I’m comparing these two “methods” are in trying to photographicaly capture the entire world at a human-level POV! So imagine an online experience where you can go to a website (e.g. EveryScape and Google) and be able to walk around just like you were there. Yep. BIG idea.
So, being able to scalably capture, store, distribute, share, etc. the whole world is tantamount. If you can’t do this, then game over man.
Companies like EveryScape, Google, Earthmine, Mapjack, Immersive Media and bunch others found a way to (cost) effectively drive around cities with car-mounted cameras. Especially EveryScape and Google have done this scalably in multiple cities all round the world with thousands of miles of coverage. (I’m sure there are others but I haven’t seen this much quantity of their content published yet.) I think this is proof enough for me to say that panoramic images can scalably cover the world.
Photosynth has not quite done this yet. I’ve seen pretty extensive number of photographs used to represent a landmark or an area, but I have not yet seen an entire city done this way yet. There are lots of brilliant minds at this, I’m sure, and it does feel feasbile. But if content publication is the standard…
Panorama 1, Photosynth 0.
Distributability
By this, I mean folks online can easily view and experience the content. Again, going to everyscape.com or maps.google.com is proof enough. Using Flash (and Flash did “change the world” in this sense) or Silverlight, users can experience the content, and the backend seems to have been implemented well.
Oh BTW, SeaDragon‘s f’in brilliant!
Panorama 2, Photosynth 1.
Maintainability
We live in a dynamic world. Things change all around us. Tomorrow, a Starbucks could turn into a Dunkin Donuts (yes, I’m from the east coast). By maintainability, I mean that these changes in the real world could easily be reflected in the mirror world online.
In any type of changes in the real world, we (EveryScape) have a “self healing” backend, so only real work is photo acquisition. Assuming all other car-mounted systems are similar, this is technically solved.
For Photosynth, it seems like a similar approach will work. Although there may be some ownership issues with Photosynth (if crowd sourced), it feels quite easy to make this assumption of maintainability.
Panorama 3, Photosynth 2.
Extensibility
Panorama 4, Photosynth 3.
Overview of Technical Characteristics
It seems like the main tech difference between Panoramas and Photosynth is the scalability. One main issue with Photosynth is the image registration / pose estimation problem and how scalable this can be. Basically, for each image added to the synth, features are detected, then corresponded to the rest of the point cloud, then a relative camera extrinsics are computed. (Apologies for the tech lingo.) I’m not fully convinced that this is the way to go when scaling up to what I want (da world!). Perhaps supplementing the image with GPS and other sensors is a good way to solve this. BUT, if the philosophy for Photosynth is still automation, consumer cameras, and crowd sourcing, I’m not sure I quite believe in scalability (yet).
Is scalability issue overcome-able for Photosynth? I think yes. Just need to see it to believe it.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:53 am
I think that you are comparing apples and oranges. A panorama is a wide field-of-view image taken from a fixed position. A photosynth is a registered collection of images taken from multiple positions. They are complementary technologies and not two-sides of coin. There is nothing stopping Photosynth from including panoramic images. In fact G’s streetview is taking steps in this direction with their integration of user content.
I think perhaps you are meaning to compare a systematically captured set of panos to an unordered set of images arranged via photosynth – but your article didn’t make this clear.
August 5th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Hi Ricardo,
Thanks for your comment!
First, very keen point on combining the two. Google has done something there (but not quite photosynthie), and there’s also a surprise coming from EveryScape as well (See video at 2:30 mark on for the demo http://allthingsv.com/2009/06/30/mobile-reality-demo/). So, I do agree that combination would be perhaps the best of both worlds.
BUT, as I said, this to-combine-or-not-to-combine issue could be a “philosophical” thing, where Microsoft wants to make sure that crowd-sourceability-ness remains untarnished for Photosynth. Crowd-sourceability-ness is a VERY powerful notion and a differentiator. (Or perhaps MS will come out with another product).
As to your point of apples-to-oranges, yes, I am trying to make this into an apples-to-apples comparison by saying that the premise is photographically capturing the world, and that by panos, I mean a la EveryScape or Google. (I was hoping that the picture of Dr. Evil made that clear
Thanks.
August 5th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Thanks for the reply. One more point – in terms of scalability I saw this on boingboing a few days back: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/04/rome-in-a-day-projec.html It looks like they’ve been able to scale photosynth to city-scale data sets?
August 5th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Nice! Thanks. Yes, the actual paper is done by folks from Cornell, University of Washington, and Microsoft (also called Photo Tourism). They will present their new research work at ICCV 2009 (http://www.iccv2009.org/) end of September.
I’m sure it’ll be very interesting and look forward to it implemented and published to the masses.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
[...] of the crowd to make sense of a real place, but it’s yet to be seen that this technology can conquer the world. (In fact, I’m looking forward to a new research publication coming out this September). [...]
August 13th, 2009 at 12:36 am
[...] Part 3: Technical Characteristics [...]