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Telecommunications Microsoft gathering millions of photos for Virtual Earth 3D
Telecommunications Microsoft gathering millions of photos for Virtual Earth 3D | Microsoft gathering millions of photos for Virtual Earth 3D |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Monday, 27 November 2006 | |
  
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The Sunday Times did not elaborate on the technology being used to do this, but back in August Microsoft launched Photosynth, a new photo-browsing system claimed to "enable people to combine their photos with thousands of others collected on the Internet to present a detailed 3D model which gives viewers the sensation of smoothly gliding around the scene from every angle." According to the Photosynth website, the process begins with "nothing more than a bunch of digital photos," that "might be a mixture of images from many different cameras, shooting conditions, dates, times of day, resolutions, and so on." iTWire anticipated such a development in September when rival Google enhanced Google Earth with a "multimedia overlay" providing information about the location that the user zooms in on. Featured content information in the overlay is drawn from a variety of content providers and embraces information about the geography, geology, biology of an area as well as man-made features and services. We noted at the time: "the enhancement of this technology with Photosynth would be a logical next step were it not for the fact that Microsoft not Google owns it." The development of this technology is expected to see real advertising and real goods for sale in this virtual world. So for example it could be possible to walk down through the streets of New York into a famous department store and view and buy the goods. {moscomment} |
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