I’ve been using the Microsoft panoramic and Photosynth tools for years now and I tend to say that they are the best tools one can get to create fast, easy and high-quality panoramic images.

There is photosynth.net to store all those panoramic pictures like this one from 2008:

The photosynth technology itself contains several other interesting technologies like SeaDragon which allows high quality image zooming on current internet connection speeds.

This awesome technology is as of now available on the iPhone (3GS and upwards) and it’s better than all the other panoramic tools I’ve used on a phone.

the process of taking the images

after the pictures are taken additional stitching is needed

after the stitching completed a fairly impressive panoramic images is the result

Source 1: Photosynth articles from the past
Source 2: Photosynth in Wikipedia
Source 3: Photosynth on iPhone App Store

Finally a game where I can drive that car!

Source: http://www.forzaclans.com

“In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking,
But now, God knows,
Anything Goes.”

Also deshalb auch ein paar Update Panoramen:

(Achim am Gerät)

“Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. You shoot a set of overlapping photographs of a scene from a single location, and Image Composite Editor creates a high-resolution panorama incorporating all your images at full resolution. Then save your stitched panorama in a wide variety of formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to multi-resolution tiled formats like HD View and Silverlight Deep Zoom.”

Source: http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/ice.html

Source: blog.ahzf.de

Source: FeM Blog

This is the Forza Motorsport 2 Nürburgring:

(Forza Motorsport 2)

… remember when I had the exact same location pictured before in Project Gotham Racing 3:

(Project Gotham Racing 3)

Source: http://blog.slash-me.net/index.php?/archives/175-N…

Source: http://www.worth1000.com/tutorial.asp?sid=161123&print=1

Yes I am alive… I took some days off so here we are back in business. There will be some articles about the things I did the last days…and of course as usual: many pictures.

I start the series with the visit to the Zoo of Erfurt:

Of course I made some panoramic views:

this and the next one show the enclosure where the turtles and the cows live

the monkeys live here…(no island)

Here are the three movies I made:

Gamers rejoice! Today there were some really great updates in the XBOX 360 queue. The most interesting one is the update for Project Gotham Racing 3 – one of the launch titles of the 360. You finally can export the pictures you took in “Photo Mode” to your computer. Just select the picture and send it to your “Your Photos”-Webpage and grab them from there.

I straight went onto the track with the Sagaris to take some test pictures:

yes, HDR…

yes, panoramic view…

I just can say: WOW! That’s what I was looking for when I used the “Photo Mode” over half a year ago for the first time…Oh…I forgot to mention that they are also doing a competition…if you want to take part…here’s the info you need.

Source 1: http://projectgothamracing3.com/photos/PhotoGallery
Source 2: http://www.bizarreonline.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=216755

After several really really hot days we’re finally getting some rain…temperatures dropping to 26 degree celsius…

This is only one of several other panoramic views of the moon.

Source: http://moonpans.co.uk/vr/

After last years FIWAK, FeM is back in the forest. This year with even more hardware, even more people and even more tents.

The first lecture starts in just a few minutes so stay tuned for more news on the FIWAK 06.

Source: FeM FIWAK Homepage

And those noisy crowd watched it…

Once again I reorganised my desktop. One display less now, but much more working space on the left-hand.

See part 2 and part 1 for comparison.

Impressingly enough: the 1.8l 4 cylinder engine of this Toyota made 100km with about 25l… the display even showed 90,9l/100km from time to time…quite frightening.

Oh and some words to the Toyota itself: bad gearbox, even worse the ride. The clutch: nightmare. To be fair: everything was brand new: the car only had 57km on the clock. Oh: It’s no SIXT rental car…I never got any japanese plastic-bombers from them… THANK GOD!

And small panoramic view of the training room:

Hey it’s april! And on my way home I took some pictures…giving you an impression of the cloudy sky which is characteristic for Ilmenau at this time of the year…

To small. To dubious. Well… you get the idea. And 12 Euro for 1700 qm is quite a price…

Then we decided to take a walk in the old town of Erfurt. Where we found a new product…(sorry, german only joke)

I am at the Microsoft Studentpartner Summit 2006 in Duesseldorf-Mettmann at the moment. And of course I made some panoramic views:

Andreas took those gorgeous panoramic views. Really really great. Don’t miss his blog.

But since I had the chance to sneak behind the scenes at the Microsoft booth I want to present you a little bit of the pictures I just made…:

The presentation theater as everyone can see it…

That’s the theater from behind… a huge projector and a really big mirror render the HD projection perfect…

]]> http://www.schrankmonster.de/2006/03/12/microsoft-at-cebit-06/feed/ 0 http://www.schrankmonster.de/2006/03/07/we-where-out-for-dinner-the-nektar-in-munich/ http://www.schrankmonster.de/2006/03/07/we-where-out-for-dinner-the-nektar-in-munich/#comments Tue, 07 Mar 2006 10:45:43 +0000 bietiekay http://www.schrankmonster.de/2006/03/07/weWhereOutForDinnerTheNektarInMunich.aspx

Here are some pictures of the “Nektar“…

Source: http://www.nektar.de

yeah, things have to be discussed…

But I should have known better… so it was more like this today:

Just not to forget… a picture of warmer times:

I was asked today what tools I use to create the panoramic views on this website. I personally prefer easy to use – “let the automatic do”-tools. That’s why I used Ulead Cool360 for years to create the panoramic views. But since some months I am using the brand new Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 to create the panoramic views out of the raw pictures.

The first step is to load all the pictures into the Suite:

then Tools→Panoramic Stitching…

then you have to select which pictures you want to use for the panoramic stitching process:

Digital Image Suite now creates a preview for you where you can adjust in whatever way you like – unfortunately no perspective adjustments are possible – but normally not necessary if you took the pictures well:

Click Next and you get the “Stitching in Progress” Dialog…waiting … waiting …

And finally: The Result! You have to select the display window – because maybe – like in my example – the pictures are a bit tilted.

Oh… if you want all that a little bit more compressed…have a look at the demo video I made:

demo movie…click on it!

Source 1: Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006
Source 2: Demo Video

thanks to namenlos

We only had the time to test one lecture hall today – and this is our current setup which worked quite good:

A complete listing from where to where the signals are routed will be available tomorrow.

the headless encoding pc kinda broke for a second.

…and the mandatory panoramic views:

Since we are kind of interested in providing a large user DECT network on the campus of our university we spoke with the Eventphone guys about their setup: and as far as we can tell it’s far more sophisticated than expected.

little panoramic view of the POC server room

the Alcatel machine rear view

patch panel

front view

front view with logo

switching switch

audio patch panel

the actual POC service area in the main hall

Well sorry that there are more pictures than text – it’s just because we have to compile all the information we got and pile it all together into a nice and well understandable text for your reading pleasure.

Well here we are – packed with equipment we arrived in Berlin and successfully tested the first encoding-run for the upcoming 22c3 which starts in two days.

hmm… bad weather

this text was on the equipment to discourage thieves

rest place at the A9

finally some food – well maedness had some sandwiches – but finally something hot

the fairy dust has landed

Since we arrived we unpacked all the equpiment and drawn-in our new “office” for the next days: the video studio – which is kind of above/around hall 1.

so here we are… on the right side you can see into hall 1 through the window.

concentrated calculating power – our four encoding machines + one fallback.

Funny thing beside that: we got our own /24 subnet here – peered with 10GE directly to the Berlin CIX. How cool is that

This is just a part of the stuff we’re going to take with us for the 22c3:

hrhr…2 Sony HDR-FX-1E, 2 Sony VX-2100, 1 Sony VX-2000, 5 Shuttle XPCs, 4 Shuttle 19″ TFT displays…

well..it’s over… some impressions – more to come:

I spent the whole day in Dresden – introducing Lars Iwer into his new job at Microsoft. But because that did not take the whole day I had some time to walk along Dresden. Actually I underestimated the fact that it’s getting dark quite early at wintertimes. That and because my digital camera isn’t as good as it should be is the cause that there are just some panoramic views from Dresden – not showing any of the usual sights . Oh. I should mention the heroic presentation the Ford Galaxy gave us – yes, Sixt decided to give me another one after the death of the first one.

who designed that?!

since the big picture is >19000 pixels width you can
get a medium size version here.

we illuminated the Audimax….yellow and blue: the FeM colors.

thx to teliko for the pictures

And of course there are some panoramic views .

Oh by the way: Who knows where this is?

well…that’s not the harbour, that’s the meeting room…

that’s one part of it… watching straight out of the Courtyard Marriott Hotel…

that’s the view out of my room here…nice, isn’t it?

as usual from left to right: Mac mini (Samsung TFT 910T), custom P4 (Samsung TFT 910T+19″ Highscreen), HP compaq nc8000 (Belinea 108025, built-in 15″ TFT).

Source: The perfect working environment part 1

That was the coolest Microsoft presented party I’ve taken part in. The live band was great: Scissor Sisters. Man that was an awesome show. So I took some pictures of the location which was calles “Studio 7″ – Actually it was Hall 7 of the RAI Conference Center…but see for yourself how it looked:

that’s what I saw when I came into the hall

Well sine there were no refreshments we relied on the fact that there would be proper food at the party. And there was. At about 7 locations inside the hall you could grab Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, Fishburgers and Stuff.

So. I don’t want to bore you with food pictures and blahblah about the organisation… here are the Scissor Sisters!

a short video…it’s shaky but it gives a feeling.

sorry for the bad quality…it’s just my little cam.

that’s a guy up there…controlling the spotlight.

that’s no genetically modified vaccine or something…it’s just alkohol B-). Hmm.. I don’t drink it actually…it’s just for educational purposes.

As I am a true fan of the sessions of Rafal Lukawiecki. And the fact that he is talking about really interesting subjects leads me directly to his todays session “Holistic Security”.

“You know all the security technologies, but are you secure? How much should security cost? The tough realities of today make security of enterprise systems one of the highest priorities on most IT Professionals’ agenda. This conceptual, rather than technical, session will overview security from a holistic, process-oriented perspective. While still uncommon, this approach seems to best model the threats that affect our installations. This way of looking at security is based on risk assessment and worries about all aspects of the system equally: we do not want to be building bullet-proof steel doors in a house made of paper walls. After discussing the main challenges that make achieving optimal security difficult, we will concentrate on three process-based holistic approaches: OCTAVE, Simplified Security Risk Analysis, and Threat Modelling.”

This panoramic view is in my opinion by far the best I’ve made this week. Enjoy.

This is a quite good panoramic view of the RAI Conference Center entry…and the Microsoft Billboards …

We attended the Chalk and Talk Session “Microsoft and Opensource” today… Actually a very interesting session, but I spare any comment on it here, just not to annoy anyone (which would otherwise be possible).

“Many customers have questions about Microsoft’s view of Open Source and its ability to coexist and interoperate in a Microsoft environment. The session aims to answer your questions about Open Source and provide information and guidance on Microsoft’s position on open Source. “

This is where the TechEd Europe 2005 takes place…well actually the TechEd Europe 2005 takes place BEHIND me when I took that picture…but possibly nobody will post THIS perspective

Well. The Keynote. It’s less than I expected -actually it’s a nearly 100 percent copy of the Orlando TechEd Keynote… damn! – I knew everything they would say… well said.

So here are some panoramic views for your pleasure: