"How many people are really going to take 20 to 300 pictures, 360 degrees around an object, just to get a 3D montage?"

Not many. On the other hand, millions of people travel each year and take dozens of pictures each, often of the same sites but from different vantages. Their willingness to put those photos on line is already proved. So how cool would it be if via Photosynth, GPS, etc, 360 degree views of every important landmark on earth got created over time, so that folks who can go there could still get an idea of what it's like?

can go there > can't go there

This is neat. Now Windows can do what Apple's Quicktime has been doing for more than a decade. It's about time!

I was thinking along the same lines as Paul, that a whole bunch of people could put photos of major landmarks together over time. One challenge would be smoothing out differences in lighting conditions and weather.

This might make more sense indoors, say in splicing together shots of major museums and art galleries. Any people or other transient objects found in zones of overlap would, presumably, have to be edited out for a consistent look and feel.

@Joy

Quicktime doesn't do anything like Photosynth. Apple fanbois are long on confidence and short on knowledge.

I agree that casual photographers will not use this. I think that more serious photographers will use it to create amazing presentations.

I agree with your list of applications, but I think you minimize their value too much. Take education - why wouldn't people or companies make detailed presentations of tens of thousands of sights that students otherwise would not be able to visualize? What about mapping? I think the commercial and educational possibilities are limitless.

Whoever said quicktime will do this should take a look at the video on the site, or one of the demos. (Removed snarky comment about poor quality and minimal usefulness of quicktime before clicking Post).

You don't need a lot of people create these 3D synth views, you just need a select few to create some interesting ones from around the globe.

The majority of people, like myself, will just sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Not a lot of people MAKE games but a LOT play them.

Also, I can't help think that a viewer for Photosynth will eventually make it's way into Silverlight so you don't need to install anything but the Silverlight plug-in to view these 3D Photosynth images.

Why do you slam this. It's innovation. Sure you may not see it's uses for the average joe, but if things like this never see the light of day,then niche markets won't even be able to make use of it.

I think it's pretty naive to think that just because there's no mass-market appeal for creating "synths," this isn't a worthy technology. By making this available to the public, I bet we see artistic types creating some unbelievable pieces of imagery. And that's discounting obvious applications for art galleries, real estate, education, virtual tourism, hotels, and more. And that's not even taking into account what Microsoft can do with technology like this on the back end, with Virtual Earth and related tech.

My 2c -- this is one of the coolest pieces of consumer tech to come out of Microsoft in a long time. My mother may not use it to create, but she'll sure enjoy it when a 3D walkthrough/around of the Birds Nest stadium appears next to an article she's reading about the Olympics on MSN.

I also think Joe missed the mark on this blog entry. Leading the way is not bad. Sometimes, people don't know what they want until they see it. Remember how Tom Watson, Jr. used to predict a worldwide market installation of no more than five computers, and how Bill Gates used to predict that personal computers wouldn't need 64KB of memory? Imagine if nobody ignored those predictions and therefore nobody developed technology with no market demand.

Of course, while running on x86_64 Ubuntu, neither Silverlight nor WorldWide Telescope are available to me. So, if Microsoft can slam Linux for not having enough market share to support a port of their applications to Linux (which is really a Catch-22, and they know it; after all, there was no market for Windows 2.X so Microsoft created one with their applications), then Joe is perfectly within his rights to slam Microsoft for releasing technology without a proven market demand. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and all that.

So IMHATO (in my humble and twisted opinion), Joe, you did the wrong thing but for the right reason!

Oh c'mon! Thats like saying "nobody needs to take 500 pictures" when the first digital cameras were introduced.

Get a life Joe.. this is a product from Live Labs? Do you know what a lab is? This is a experimental project? not a production stuf..

FY uneducated unnecessary post.. here is the description from live labs

"We take on projects of all shapes and sizes, experiment with crazy new ideas, and develop helpful tools during our bigger projects. Here are a few side projects you might find helpful or fascinating."

I don't own a camera. I never take pictures. I'll never use this. There must be six or seven people on earth who fit this category. So Joe must be right!

Why Would You Synth? One word: Fun. I will show my parents in Canada what the outside and inside of my new house looks like here in Taiwan... they will love it. After 2 min. of getting the news that the site was up, I had already posted 4 pictures of a panoramic of the fields beside my house.. it was so easy. I did not need to ask why, I was having too much fun. I am surprised someone had to ask why?

Outdoorsy people will love this feature. Mountaineers and hikers can join together and put together really cool Synths of natural features. Think all the main climbing and hiking routes on Mt. Rainier, captured in Synth. I can't wait to see the results! Way to go Microsoft!

At this point photosynth takes a lot effort on the consumer's part so, the benefits are less than they could be. But, it should be painfully clear that this is just the beginning. You really need to expand your horizon a little. Was google search all that amazing when it had first come around, before it had indexed everything and truly refined it's algorithm? If you want to understand were photosynth technology is going check out Microsoft's and UW Photo Tourism, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLLzV5qeKyk. As to Quicktime being able to do this for a decade, the quicktime vr was worthless and nothing more than panorama stitching. It's unfortunate that people are going to knock this without even trying it.

"How many people are really going to take 20 to 300 pictures, 360 degrees around an object, just to get a 3D montage? Let's get real."

Apparently quite a few. So let's get real and admit that Microsoft came out with something pretty darn cool. What? You mean you can say "cool" in a sentence without talking about Apple? I guess you can.
Paul made a comment about Apple fanbois (which I love... it's like snooty French Apple fans) and I've noticed that ever since Joe took over the Apple Watch post, his articles have become a lot more slanted against Microsoft and gushing toward Apple. It was almost as if the Apple Watch assignment got to his head that he could drop objectivity and hop on the Microsoft Bashing Express. Six hours in line to get a new iPhone that doesn't make calls? Come on Joe, seriously.
In the end, Photosynth is a really extraordinary service. I think it's full potential hasn't been fully realized yet and won't for quite some time.

close-minded
the point of photosynth is that you could connect people to a web site like Flickr and benifit from everyone's photos, or travel groups can create a 3D landscape of their trip.

Photosynth is designed for combing pictures from DSLR to cheap digital for that very reason: it's not you taking 300 pictures, it's about collaboration to map out a 3D version of a place. It's 3D google street view, one that gets progressivly more precise as time goes by and people contribute more images.

Hey OTTO, six hours in line waiting for an iphone isn't so bad: WHEN YOU'RE BEING PAID to be there.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080822160512.73kd7gg9&show_article=1

@Otto:
I think you are right: Photosynth is a really extraordinary service, and its full potential hasn't been fully realized yet and won't for quite some time.

And that potential will likely include an open-source version of Photosynth's capabilities that does the same thing or better but doesn't lock its users into Microsoft's license prison. Maybe a Gimp or Blender plug-in. But, as you say, this full potential won't be realized for quite a while.

"How many people are really going to take 20 to 300 pictures, 360 degrees around an object, just to get a 3D montage?"

How about enough people to create almost 8,000 synths from nearly 300,000 images uploaded in the first 24 hours of operation.

Guess you missed the mark a little bit on this one.

http://blogs.msdn.com/photosynth/archive/2008/08/22/photosynth-day-1.aspx

Did you know that even just 2 to 5 pictures can be use to create cool looking synths? So it's not limited to 400 pics.