Now, on the other hand, panorama is still king in terms of its ability to create a truly interactive photograph. It takes what makes photography so great, and without taking anything away from that, makes it a two way experience b/w the user and program. Viewers are no longer limited by where they can and can’t look, like in traditional phtography. The biggest trump card panorama has against Photosynth is that even when you can form a whole 360 degree view from photographs, it still retain the artisticality found in traditional photography since it doesn’t distort the photos so much they look like a sloppily joined bunch of photographs.

So all in all, I’ll still be rooting for Photosynth in the long run, since this here is a system that can be improved and eventually catch on to the quality of a panorama, while panorama, as beautiful and awe inspiring as it is, is at its end of the road. To further improve panorama, there’s really nothing left to do but to integrate some system similar to photosynth, which is quite counter-productive to this comparison and discussion.

Thanks for your insight and your readership. I am hoping that we are right. I’m assuming you’ve taken panos before?

Great blog. I want to comment on this post by referencing another article you wrote a while back explaining why Amazon’s A9 Block View and Microsoft’s Streetside failed (http://allthingsv.com/2009/07/28/a9-and-streetside-why-did-they-fail/). In your own words, “One could argue that panoramic imagery is more immersive and experiential.”

If this is the case, it explains perfectly well why panoramic photos such as those provided by Google Street View are preferred to static images like Photosynth’s. You are absolutely right when you say that users feel limited in their movements around a space using Photosynth. There’s no need to avoid being subjective; I think you’re absolutely correct. The immersiveness is a big deal, and I think it’ll lead to a big reason why panoramic photos will win in popularity in the near future.

I also disagree that panoramic photos are difficult to process. What about Google Street View? That’s something that’s only possible with panaramic photography. It would be nearly impossible to create panoramic views of every spot in a giant city using Photosynth.

Sheil

Wow, that’s a long response. Will try to address all your thoughts here.

By “stand alone” program, for me that means it’s something we (the consumers) can download and use. I’m not aware of any stand alone progs for photosynth. Perhaps they have an enterprise version that one can buy with hardware and such, but that’s definitely not a $79 panorama stitching program.

BUT, if there is a stand alone photosynth we can download, I’m all for that. Pls share! tx.

NICE LINK on the Bing site. Definitely looking forward to that as well.

If you have some URLs to share about the voxel representation, I would absolutely love to see that. Again, I don’t believe voxel representation is internet ready, but I would rather be wrong.

Also, photosynth can produce some point cloud of a tree (as per your example), but in the end, the point cloud representation needs to be “solidified.” Converting a cloud into tree polys robustly could be problematic. Splatting the points might work, but the point clouds would not be dense enough typically. So, anyway, again i’d love to see something that works at internet scale. Just haven’t yet.

Tx for your response! What line of work are you in, BTW?

Fascinating series.

I’m a huge fan of Photosynth, but I have one small quarrel with you when you say “It’s all web based so no other software bit is necessary.”. The synther is definitely a standalone program and is Windows only. Your statement would make it sound more like http://seadragon.com where the conversion really does happen in the cloud. I actually consider this something of a dangerous weakness compared to what Google is doing with Panoramio and Picasa web album photos and Street View.

The trade-off with Google’s method is that you never know when they may or may not decide to recalculate the synth for any given location that you’ve geotagged your photos at so that it includes your photos. The pain point with Photosynth is that currently neighboring synths or overlapping synths do not yet link to each other. I am curious at how that will play out when they introduce the proper Bing Maps integration that they’re working on.

As far as Wade’s objection, above, that the automatic generation of polygonal models from photography is somehow a third and different approach, separate from what Photosynth is up to, I really do disagree. The point cloud is not, I feel, the final product of Photosynth’s calculations. The current point cloud can certainly be beefed up using proper stereo computer vision algorithms far past what is currently seen from the image features that are generated with the 2 megapixel versions of our photos that the current version of Photosynth uses for reconstruction to a reasonable voxel representation of objects.

Past dense point clouds is, as pointed to above, clearly the dream of vector/polygonal models derived from the point clouds as achieved by products like iModeller or D Sculptor. I look at this as providing the clear path forward as far as populating digital globes with flora. Perhaps living in cities makes people consider 3D buildings to be of prime importance but to me the greenery is mandatory to have a beautiful world worth walking around in. This is where Photosynth shines. I’ve seen the automatic tree placement that has been attempted in Virtual Earth 3D and while I am glad that someone on that team recognises the need, the results are just pitifully inept. Photosynth, by contrast, is fully and easily capable of generating a pointcloud of a tree trunk and branches that is immediately recognisable if you are familiar with the tree in question. Placing automatically generated leaves of an identified species of tree on an accurate trunk and branches is far more acceptable than slamming down a default tree model that attempts to match the height or diameter of what is seen in Bird’s Eye View or satellite imagery.

If you’ve seen someone make a synth purely for the point cloud before, it truly is able to be viewed from angles which photos were not taken from. Granted, object faces that were never seen in any of the shots that made the synth may be void of texture and it is certainly not photorealistic, but the represented portions still provide a strong approximation of what a tree or sculpture would look like from the air or below the ground.

That’s probably enough from me for today. =] Here’s to a digital globe rendered in CryEngine 5.

(http://allthingsv.com/2009/07/08/2d-3d-2-5d/)

I agree with you that there are other technologies that have the potential to create the “Second Earth” in 3D sense. But they either suck at ground level (e.g. Google Earth, Virtual Earth), or are not scalable yet (LiDAR, manual tools).

I’m quite certain that 3D will finally make its way into a scalable, distributable, visually believable “Second Earth.” Just not true yet, and I don’t believe it would be true for anther 5-10 years.