I finally got a chance to spend a little time checking out Photosynth tonight.
Once you get over the initial let down (it’s pretty under-whelming I have to say) and start playing with it, you start to realise how useful it can be. As Mary Jo notes, this is aimed squarely at the consumer market, so the initial use is going to be stitching together (oops pardon me, I mean synthing together) holiday photos and the like. (As an aside, I can see some real-estate agents will be jumping on this as a cheaper version of those property virtual tours.)
For sure, it’s pretty nice being to zoom in and out amongst your photos… but then you suddenly realise – hey just having average resolution video is miles better than this. And given that we’ve got used to near-photo-realistic games, with complete 360 deg controls and immersive user interaction, you wonder whether this Photosynth stands much of chance.
I have to admit that I was pretty excited about Photosynth when I first saw the Notre Dame demo (more than 2 years ago!), now I’m not so sure. The big benefit of this will be when all cameras tag photos with location and angle of viewing. Being able to search for any location and angle and having it all meshed (ahem synthed) together will be nice. Tie it in with a Google Street View-esque offering and we may have something worth using.
Here’s a little synth I put together with a good friend of mine (you’ll need to download and install the 8MB setup to view it).
