Deep Zoom Composer Tool

If you paid much attention to MIX 08 this year one of the keynotes showcased the SeaDragon and PhotoSynth technology, which allows for you to view photographs of differing resolutions together.   It lets you zoom in, out and pan across a myriad of images that have been stitched together.  The specific example given in the keynote was the Memorabilia page at the Hard Rock Cafe web site.  Note that this uses Beta 1 of Silverlight 2.0.

I noticed on the MSDN Download RSS feed that they have released the Deep Zoom Composer tool that can allow you to do your own version of this with Silverlight 2.0.  Here is the download link, and here is a guide.

This is great technology.  I really like the idea of the vast amounts of photos out on the Net being collected and stitched  together to form a 3D view of the world from so many different points of view.  A great example of this is the Photo Tourism at Microsoft Research.  Imagine being able to plan your vacation, or see places you can’t afford (or isn’t safe) to go.  As we catalog our world around us, we can all contribute to recording our history.  Just imagine if there had been some way to do this when the ancient cities of Egypt stood in their prime.  How much of our view of the Egyptians would be changed?  How much of their culture would have been understood?  2,000 years+ from now how much will our descendants understand about us?