RSSMicrosoft Photosynth Now for Firefox
By Nate Mook | Published January 24, 2007, 1:35 PM
Microsoft on Wednesday added Firefox support to its Photosynth technology preview, which is capable of taking hundreds of photographs and building a three-dimensional model in which users can "fly" through like a virtual world. Support for user-created models is still in the works, however.
Photosynth was first announced at SIGGRAPH 2006. Microsoft describes it as "a hybrid of a slide show and a gaming experience that lets the viewer zoom in to see greater detail or zoom out for a more expansive view."
For now, Microsoft is providing the collections of photographs, as a user processing his or her own photos could take hours, or even days. The application also has pretty hefty hardware requirements and will only run on Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista systems with a capable graphics card.
"As you know, this is a long term project and the team continues to make progress on a daily basis to add more functionality to the underlying technology. After we released the technology preview in November we saw a number of requests for a version that would work in Firefox," said Group Product Manager Adam Sheppard.
Photosynth was born out of Microsoft's Live Labs, a group of scientists and engineers that are studying new ways to use the Internet. The group was founded in February 2006 by Dr. Gary Flake, who joined MSN as a distinguished engineer in April of last year.
"We know that you are waiting for the day when you will be able to create your own collections, and that will happen, but in the meantime look for more beautiful new examples of Photosynth in action over the coming months," Sheppard added.
The Photosynth plug-ins for both Firefox and Internet Explorer are available for download from FileForum.
Forget that. Reminds me of the ancient versions of Myst. Hangon, that means I'm ancient aswell.
I still prefer 360 Degrees of freedom - www.360dof.com as it works in both Java and Flash regardless of OS without the need for hardware acceleration, plus it's easier to use than PhotoSynth.
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|missed the point. photosynth isn't a "create a virtual tour!" application, it's a "synthesise a virtual tour from thousands of independent photos taken by potentially hundreds of different people with dozens of different kinds of equipment and no extra alignment information". the smarts aren't in the web front-end (which I think is a little too heavyweight) but in the back-end processing.
the firefox plug-in is just to satisfy folks using firefox who want to see the thing run as well.
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|Installed it. Doesn't do anything. Add-on isn't listed in the add-ons list in Firefox. There is no way to easily uninstall it. Puts crap all over your system (Windows directory, registry, temp files, etc). Way to go Microsoft.
I must have installed 50 different Firefox add-ons and never had a problem cleaning one out until this one. And I knew it would happen! Why? Because Microsoft just never gets anything right. It's really unbelievable.
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|It doesn't list an add-on because it's not an add-on... it's a plugin, and as such is only listed under about:plugin (Mozilla should really integrate this list with add-ons, IMO) Oddly you never get a notice if it installs correctly, which would seem to me to be a design flaw in Firefox, unless it was never intended to allow installation of plugins from an XPI.
You can tell if it's installed by checking under about:plugins. The Photosynth website should work in Firefox if the plugin is listed.
To uninstall, close Firefox and delete Firefox\plugin\*photosynth*.dll. I'm not sure if that's all it puts but that's the easy way to unplug a plugin, pun intended.
Also on the topic of hard to uninstall Firefox extensions, the worse I've found was the first release of Google Web Accelerator, and that's even avoiding the argument that Web Accelerators have more cons than pros. It didn't use an extension package; it rooted it's files directly in the Firefox chrome files, meaning it was installed for all users and was not easily removable. Very ugly. I sincerely hope it's improved since then.
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|If it were only that easy to uninstall. Check out the log...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://media.labs.live.c...s/_code_/photosynth.xpi -- 2007-01-24 15:48:52
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Photosynth Technology Preview (version 1.0.1.602)
-----------------------------
** Moz registerPLID: rootKey==HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
** Moz registerPLID: Registry keys seems to be written successfully
** Moz First Install Installation: registerPLID(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) returned, status 0
** Moz registerPLID: rootKey==HKEY_CURRENT_USER
** Moz registerPLID: Registry keys seems to be written successfully
** First Install Installation: registerPLID(HKEY_CURRENT_USER) returned, status 0
** PLID entries are present in the Win32 Registry
[1/35] Installing: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins\nppsynth.dll
[2/35] Installing: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins\Seadragon.dll
[3/35] Installing: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\components\nsIPhotosynth.xpt
[4/35] Executing: C:\DOCUME~1\XXXXXX~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\xpinstall.exe
[5/35] Executing: C:\DOCUME~1\XXXXXX~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\xpinstall-1.exe
[6/35] Create Folder: C:\WINDOWS\system32\Photosynth
[7/35] Installing: C:\WINDOWS\system32\Photosynth\nppsynth.dll
[8/35] Installing: C:\WINDOWS\system32\Photosynth\Seadragon.dll
[9/35] Installing: C:\WINDOWS\system32\Photosynth\nsIPhotosynth.xpt
[10/35] Create Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 []
[11/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 [Path]
[12/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 [XPTPath]
[13/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 [ProductName]
[14/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 [Vendor]
[15/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 [Description]
[16/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 [Version]
[17/35] Create Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602\MimeTypes []
[18/35] Create Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602\MimeTypes\application/x-photosynth []
[19/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602\MimeTypes\application/x-photosynth [Description]
[20/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602\MimeTypes\application/x-photosynth [Suffixes]
[21/35] Create Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602\Suffixes []
[22/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602\Suffixes [sxs]
[23/35] Create Registry Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 []
[24/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 [Path]
[25/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 [XPTPath]
[26/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 [ProductName]
[27/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 [Vendor]
[28/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 [Description]
[29/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602 [Version]
[30/35] Create Registry Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602\MimeTypes []
[31/35] Create Registry Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602\MimeTypes\application/x-photosynth []
[32/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602\MimeTypes\application/x-photosynth [Description]
[33/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602\MimeTypes\application/x-photosynth [Suffixes]
[34/35] Create Registry Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602\Suffixes []
[35/35] Store Registry Value String: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/photosynth,version=1.0.1.602\Suffixes [sxs]
Install completed successfully -- 2007-01-24 15:49:36
Score: 0
|Gee... look at that.
The Firefox plugin, the program dlls no doubt necessary to run the very complex software for the site, and some registry keys.
"Oh noes! It wr0tx0rz some k3y5 in my r3g1str0rz!!!!!!!111!!!!111!1!!!!1!!oneone!!"
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|Not sure how I feel about this... it's definitely 'neat', but I'm not sure that many casual photographers have images that would be suitable for this ... plus how would one implement one of these for their own pictures?
It's ... neat. Definitely... cool. But again, I'm not so sure that this is something that people will use. It's certainly eye-candy, and would be nice to be included as a widget type thing with Vista.
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|The idea is for multiple users to submit pictures of the same general area. Photosynth would then build a 3D environment from those photos. Imagine if 100,000 people submitted pictures of something like Disneyland or the Grand Canyon. You could then take a virtual tour of that place right from your computer.
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