Midweek yayness! The brilliant research and engineering showcase from Microsoft – Photosynth – is now available on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The Photosynth app for iOS has been a hit with over 7 million downloads, however, like several recent apps for Windows Phone, this one too apparently betters the user experience than its counterpart.
The free app makes it easy and fun to capture and share interactive panoramas of the places, people, and events that are important to you. All you need to do is launch the app, move the camera around to capture, and fill your panorama. It is the only app available on any mobile platform that allows you to capture 360 degrees horizontally and vertically. Once you are done, the shots would be automatically stitched together for an immersive experience.
Once you’ve created a Photosynth, you can share it as an interactive panorama experience on Facebook and Twitter using the free Photosynth.net service or as a static image. Photosynth has a neat integration with Bing. Once published to Bing, your panoramas will be visible to millions of people on Bing Maps and in Bing search results when they search for the places you’ve captured. And then there is a Bing featured list too!
The Windows Phone app requires a gyroscope and the Marketplace throws the alert while you attempt to install the same. However, I created a few Photosynths on my Samsung Omnia 7 (no gyroscope) and they came out pretty good. Also, according to the team’s blog post, Photosynth requires significant memory for stitching and is only available for phones with at least 512MB of RAM.
I’ve been a huge fan of the technology and the experience since it was in a closed beta over four years back. Sometimes, even a wide angle photo or a stitched panorama does not do justice to a scenic view or an architectural setting, and the remarkable ability of Photosynth to stitch a full sphere comes handy. For old time’s sake, here’s one of my panoramas of India Gate, New Delhi – a Bing featured Photosynth.
