It’s been in the making for a couple / if not three years in the making, but Microsoft has launched the perfect time waster photo software.

The software is actually very interesting from a technology perspective, it combines overlapping photos from places to create a sort of 3D environment, from many different angles. It’s called Photosynth.

Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point the photos were taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos.”

Photosynth is currently a Windows only plug-in, but for users with Silverlight installed on there machine can also view some content (the Silverlight service is in beta at the moment).

Photosynth screenshot in action with National Geographic - Sphinx

The environment totally depends on the number of photographs and at what quality they are. But on the whole, users can take lots of photos from different angles of the same place or object and then Photosynth with create the environment.

There are already some interesting places that can be explored, and many more are on the way.

It’s difficult to explain until you have seen it in action, but it is fantastic to play about with and see what others have already done. Have a look at some of the favourite stuff, it’ s just amazing.

Link: Photosynth

Tags: Environment, microsoft