Microsoft Virtual Earth offers 3D building capability
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Partnership with Dassault Systemes on free online application will allow users to build and share virtual 3D structures.
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A "safe, secure" virtual world which children can inhabit and interact with is being planned by the BBC.
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Desktop 3.0 will support both DirectX and OpenGL titles running in Windows virtual machines, the company says.
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French to take MS Virtual Earth into another dimension French firm Dassault Systemes today launched a site for sharing three-dimensional models that it hopes will become "the 3D Flickr".â¦
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ is working on a variety of innovative photo projects, ranging from experiments with its 3D maps offering to massive panoramic photos that users can zoom into for details. Developers who work in the company's research arm showed off the technologies on Tuesday during the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit in Redmond, Washington. HD View is one photo project that definitely has the "wow" factor. The technology allows users to combine hundreds of photos to create one massive picture that users can zoom in on to see clear details. In one example, a panoramic photo of the city of Seattle includes 800 images, each 8 megapixals in size, stitched together to create a 3.6 billion-pixel image. On a computer screen, it looks just like a panoramic photo. So, what's the point of combining so many photos? The massive file includes incredible detail. Michael Cohen, a researcher at Microsoft working on the project, zoomed in to the roof of a building where a clay owl peers around a corner. With the picture zoomed out, a viewer doesn't even see a pin prick in the spot where the owl sits. Another large photo of a mountain in Canada looks like a standard nature snapshot. But Cohen zoomed in to discover that climbers are scaling the rock wall. After finding the first climber, he followed the climbing ropes up to find the second one above him on the wall. When the photo is zoomed out, it's hard to imagine there might be climbers on the wall. Microsoft offers the tool to build HD View photos for free on its Web site. Creating an HD View panorama image, however, isn't for just anyone. Such images are quite large and may require special cameras. Another Microsoft project, unveiled last year and built in collaboration with the University of Washington, collects images of a site such as Rome's Trevi fountain from public photo-sharing Web pages such as Flickr. The Photo Tourism technology combines the photos into a 3D image so users can look at the object from any view. The idea was to take advantage of the potentially billions of images that are online, said Noah Snavely, a researcher at the University of Washington who works on the project with Microsoft researchers. Microsoft also demonstrated at the summit some experiments with Virtual Earth. Eyal Ofek, a Microsoft researcher, demonstrated a 3D map of San Francisco that is made up of 10 million images, including 50,000 aerial photographs as well as pictures taken at street level. All the photos are stitched together so a user can navigate from a bird's-eye view seamlessly down to street level. The view is different from the street view capability in Google Maps, which doesn't combine the street-level pictures with aerial shots. About 800 workers are developing projects at Microsoft Research. Some technologies they develop may become commercial Microsoft products, and others could be sold to other companies. The summit, which ended Tuesday, was an opportunity for Microsoft and its partners in academia to show off some of their projects.
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Here's a look at how Microsoft's Hyper-V works, its major benefits and when you can expect to deploy this in production environments.
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IBM wants to see how it can make 3D virtual environments pay off for it and its customers.
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Virtual reality might finally be the medium that unites the passive experience of watching television with the interactive potential of the Web.
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Members of Microsoft&#39;s Developer Network got a sneak peek at Microsoft&#39;s Avalon windowing elements technology last week. Avalon, which will make the user interface much more than just a
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Higgins-project developers are creating a tool equivalent to Windows CardSpace but need Microsoft's go-ahead for certain features.
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Holographs could become much more widely used as US scientist discover a quick way to make the 3D images.
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A new report advises companies to prepare strategies that take into account their goals and projected costs before foraying into virtual worlds.
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Three-dimensional technology is changing the way buildings are designed and built--but the industry will have to change, too.
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(InfoWorld) - Maporama International, a French location services company, hasÂ partnered with MicrosoftÂ to use its Virtual Earth mapping and satellite imagery, the companies said on Thursday. Maporama's business is focused on location-based services, such as back-end Web server technology to incorporate various mapping features into Web sites, said Ludovic Broquereau, Maporama's vice president for corporate marketing. The company also provides services and creates software incorporating GPS (global position system) data, among other products. Maporama, a 45-person company founded in 2000, already works with about 30 different mapping providers, Broquereau said. Google's mapping and satellite products were also initially under consideration, but Broquereau said Microsoft's product road map is a better fit for Maporama's needs. Maporama was also attracted to Microsoft's oblique imagery, which is so far not available with Google, Broquereau said. Microsoft calls the feature "bird's-eye view," so buildings and landscapes can be viewed closer up at a 45-degree angle. Overall, negotiations with Microsoft were easier than with Google, and Maporama already uses Microsoft's products, Broquereau said. Virtual Earth will be integrated into Maporama's product line over the next few months, Broquereau said. One of Maporama's clients is Accor, the European hotel company. As an example, Broquereau said Virtual Earth satellite and oblique imagery could be woven into Accor's Web site as an attractive feature for the site's users. Maporama did not disclose the financial arrangement with Microsoft.
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Virtual Iron Software (www.virtualiron.com), a provider of enterprise-class server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management software, will be a featured solution provider at the 2007 HP Technology Forum &amp; Expo in Las Vegas this week.
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Blog: Microsoft's Photosynth technology for stitching 2D images into a 3D realm will illustrate the How We Built Britain Web site.
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The DVDirect VRD-MC3 stresses two extremely important attributes: simplicity and reproduction quality.