Immersive photography

From WikiCover

On August 6, 2007, NASA and Microsoft released an interactive, 3-D photographic collection of the space shuttle Endeavour preparing for its upcoming mission to the International Space Station. Endeavour is scheduled to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 8, 2007.

People around the world can view hundreds of high resolution photographs of Endeavour, Launch Pad 39A, and the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy in a 3-D viewer. NASA and Microsoft's Live Labs team developed the online experience using hundreds of photographs and a photo imaging technology called Photosynth. Using a click-and-drag interface, viewers can zoom in to see intimate details of the shuttle booster rockets or zoom out for a more global view of the launch facility. The software uses photographs from standard digital cameras to construct a 3-D view that can be navigated and explored online.

Photosynth was created in collaboration between Microsoft and the University of Washington. The software combines hundreds or thousands of regular digital photos of a scene to present a detailed 3-D model of a subject, giving viewers the sensation of smoothly gliding around the scene from every angle. A collection can be constructed using photos from a single source or multiple sources.

Photosynth requires Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista.

Website: http://labs.live.com/