This link strated circulating in the past few days in the US - something like a mega Photosynth?
http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c

it makes interesting viewing - especially the faces of the dignitaries seated behind President Obama...zoom in - it is fun!

Gigapan has been around for a while Fred. A few months ago this chap managed to incorporate aspects of Seadragon tiling: http://www.odyex.com/gigadragon/?id=10823

thanks for the info -I got the impression that this was something new...at least that was the message going around!

that panorama is really cool!  interestingly, if you look around in CNN's "the monent" synth you can see the actual unit capturing the panorama.  i'll see if i can dig up a link.

microsoft has a really great panorama stitcher called ICE that's worth taking a look at if you make stitched panoramas.  you can download it free here:  http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/.  it has some great features, for example it can automatically brighten the scene if you zoom in on a dark area.  we're looking at how to make panoramas & photosynths play nicely together for a future release.

Thanks K - I will look into the download - there are some occasions when stitched panoramas are useful - if you need one large static image for example - combining with Photosynth could provide interesting permutations.

Well; but I couldn't read what's written on the wheel-chair ;-)))
Is it this sort of camera they use for Google-earth or Microsoft-Virtual-Earth ?

Great comment...the thoughts of the occupant of the wheel chair might be more interesting...;-)))

it was a joke ;-))) I've been watching the inauguration for hours on TV; even by us, far away in France, it was important.
But please agree that in year 2009, the 2 big brothers (Microsoft and Google) are still not able to tell us what the man in the wheel chair was thinking about (neither than the pressure in the tires ;-)))
But ... One never knows ... for the next inauguration ... could be possible

What a stitch! and photosynth is very good for stitching too.

Here's the gigapan unit capturing the inauguration panorama:  http://tinyurl.com/ch359u

It's incredible!
would you believe it? On this synth I was able to read on the wheel-chair: something like "Jenning Vista" ;-)))

But that makes me very anxious, if it's possible to recognize anybody in a crowd with such cameras, which future? and what for a private life? :-(((

Last question: how is it that the pictures come so fast to my screen, and usaually the pictures from our poor-simple synths are so low ???

Pierrot - a great joke it was!! and I loved your comment about the tire pressure!!;-))) as you say what a stitch!!

K you really did some scouting to find the gigapan camera - I gave up after 20 minutes....I am really surprised that they were using what looks like a Canon G10!

Fred - I don't think the gigapan epic can cope with weightier DSLRs + lens, so you’re limited to decent P&Ss...they’re working on DSLR vers though.

A couple of years ago I was involved in a project that used a £75k 50MP panoramic camera system - kind of next gen Gigapan. Apparently, the files were so humungous no one had a powerful enough computer to view them :-) ...something that wouldn’t happen with Seadragon.