Blaise Aguera y Arcas's dashboard

Hi there, GodSpeed55,

To view the point cloud you can either hold down the Ctrl key and let it go when you want to view the images again or if you don't want to always hold Ctrl, you can use the 'P' key to toggle through:

1) Photos + Point Cloud
2) Point Cloud only
3) Photos only

For the rest of the keyboard controls, take a look at the last pages of the Photography Guide available from the How To Get Synthy page at photosynth.net. – Nathanael Lawrence, on November 13, 2008 06:48

i dont no if im sending this message to the right spot but photosynth definately needs an option to turn of the images and leave the point cloud, because the sphinx looks like it would be really cool but the pictures get in the way and i cant hide them.

I'm a university professor in GIScience and would like to know how I can get access to the relative-height point cloud so that I can compare its accuracy against (1) a LIDAR model and (2) a related digital terrain model derived from stereo-photography.

Thanks

Of course this still only makes it viewable in Windows IE.

The Embed should allow cross browser and cross platform support. – Vagabum, on November 11, 2008 00:36

I noticed there is no fly through command in the current PDF docs, but I recall there being a point cloud fly through in one of the earlier Beta releases. What happened to that? – Vagabum, on November 10, 2008 21:54

Jaisn, Gabriel Walsh suggested a couple of tools (click here to view them) that will let you embed a web page in Powerpoint.

Once you choose one of those options, browse to the synth that you want to embed and look in the address bar of your browser. Find the part that says "view.aspx" and change it to "embed.aspx", then copy the whole URL and paste it into the webpage embedder for Powerpoint.

Please understand that this will require you to be connected to the internet and will require whatever computer you show it on to have Photosynth installed ahead of time. It may even require the Powerpoint plugin that you used to embed the web page to be installed on the computer that you view it on, so you'll probably just want to bring your own laptop for your presentation and hope that you can connect to your client's network without any problems. It is absolutely critical that your client have a fast internet connection or your presentation will end up taking a turn for the worse rather than for the better.

As for embedding a synth on your blog, it is much easier. At the right hand side of every synth you will find several icons. The first one in the row should be two angle brackets. Click on the icon and a textbox will appear that contains the HTML code that you can copy and paste into your blog. Again, remember that showing the synth to someone else on their computer will require them to have Photosynth installed in order to view it.

I hope that helps. Get back to me if I was unclear. – Nathanael Lawrence, on November 08, 2008 05:31

Jaisn, Gabriel Walsh suggested a couple of tools (click here to view them) that will let you embed a web page in Powerpoint.

Once you choose one of those options, browse to the synth that you want to embed and look in the address bar of your browser. Find the part that says "view.aspx" and change it to "embed.aspx", then copy the whole URL and paste it into the webpage embedder for Powerpoint.

Please understand that this will require you to be connected to the internet and will require whatever computer you show it on to have Photosynth installed ahead of time. It may even require the Powerpoint plugin that you used to embed the web page to be installed on the computer that you view it on, so you'll probably just want to bring your own laptop for your presentation and hope that you can connect to your client's network without any problems. It is absolutely critical that your client have a fast internet connection or your presentation will end up taking a turn for the worse rather than for the better.

As for embedding a synth on your blog, it is much easier. At the right hand side of every synth you will find several icons. The first one in the row should be two angle brackets. Click on the icon and a textbox will appear that contains the HTML code that you can copy and paste into your blog. Again, remember that showing the synth to someone else on their computer will require them to have Photosynth installed in order to view it.

I hope that helps. Get back to me if I was unclear. – Nathanael Lawrence, on November 08, 2008 05:31

That would be fantastic! I was surprised to find that I couldn't view all the images in the synth at one time. It would be really useful to have a full 3-D model, as well as the fly-through feature mentioned earlier. As long as all the images used to create it are mine, what are the obstacles to making this available? – ToStr1V, on November 08, 2008 00:43

Its impossible NOT to have it online at the moment :-/

I'm quite scared this things just going to turn into yet-another social photo sharing thing to be honest.
The potential for it to actualy be a tool that actual REAL work could benefit from I'm worried will be missed.

Disclaimer, I don't understand the technical aspects behind the program. That said, what I had hoped to do with PS when I first learned of it was to make a Synth and embed it in Powerpoint and use it as part of my presentation to a client. I'm an architect and I want to document my tour of the site and include a fancy Photosynth to impress the client. I want to take my Photosynth and use it like a video file, put it on my blog, etc. (I think you can put it online now but I haven't tried yet?)

Just thinking here...

- META data... allow me to add meta data to the synth... and the individual photos... really focus on letting me enhance the visual data with other types of data linking... or static meta data tags for searching

- build a search feature in the synth

- Hide the "stitching" (option turn off display of the photo stitching border)

- Ability to build path through photos... save... and auto-run path through photos... kind of like MS photo story 3.0

-- documents management... add "zones" to photo synth.... so you grap a photo and throw it to a zone... the zones will view the file extension... (JPEG, PDF, SWF, etc)... and cue a controller... so the PDF would allow zooming... the SWF would run... the photo would have zoom controls, cropping..

- Have a speed slider... to allow user control to overall speed of immersive experience... some synths are too jumpy... perhaps reflecting too few photos.. but something to smooth jumping between photos

- the 3 D dot structure is nice... but i'd rather view a 2-D synth... like the Hard Rock cafe example... with even more emphasis on the zoom feature to read text or grab a photo/document and throw it into a stack for pending review....

great work!

I love the halo. Wish there were an easier way to find the halos without getting close. Like a "show all halos" key, or a "next halo" key. – Warren, on November 06, 2008 18:20

I think your suggestions for improvement are great. But I also think PhotoSynth is one of the most amazing pieces of software I've ever seen. Almost magical. Hard to believe it exists. I look forward to improvements, but I like it a lot like it is. – Warren, on November 06, 2008 18:18

Me too! – Warren, on November 06, 2008 18:14

or hyperlink from synth to synth - or within parts of the same one. – Warren, on November 06, 2008 18:08

If the favorites/view were richer (like YouTube) than the non-synthy ones would just sink to the bottom, though, right? And the cool ones would pop to the top of related and tag-lists. so maybe add a 5-star or a thumbs-up/down feature? – Warren, on November 06, 2008 18:06

Asking too much? Free software that can turn flat photos into a pointcloud is like unbelievable magic already! So I think exporting that as a rendered 3D image ought to be easy. Right? – Warren, on November 06, 2008 17:56

If I get disconnected from the internet while Publishing, I get this error. I wish there were a "restart" button, so that after synthing, I can retry the publis

It may have to come to updating v.6 via Windows Update for the majority of users who don't keep up with what the latest version is. – Nathanael Lawrence, on October 24, 2008 06:04

Fduch, we'd love to have a look at what you've done! (Don't worry, we're very unlikely to find what you've done objectionable!)