Microsoft's PhotoSynth
press kit is on and
impresses.
I have some comments concerning the "2 weeks to process" mentioned on
drinsama.de . I think the author misunderstood something.
I don't think PhotoSynth is meant to be a stand-alone application like RealViz Stitcher or other stitching software. Think more of it like a 3D-Flickr, a web based service where you upload your photos. The whole work calculating the picture's position is done automatically on the server(s) (like in a certain
Oregon Data Center). As always, there's a high possibility that M$ screws it.
It seems PhotoSynth uses different techniques which you could summarize as Optical Flow. For a long time now RealViz' for example used this technology in specialized software packages mainly aimed at the Visual FX market. Recently those technologies emerged in postproduction workhorses like Apple's Shake.
You can find more info on optical flow at fxguide's article
Art of Optical Flow.
walterra - 2. Aug, 01:14