Panoramas like you have never seen before

May 25, 2007 16:08 GMT  ·  By

Digital images continue to evolve, and as such, Microsoft focused on a project designed to deliver users with unique ways to view and interact with large multi gigapixel panoramic images. HD View is the result of the work from Microsoft research, an image viewer that will take full advantage of graphics hardware in order to enable streamlined panning and zooming of large images. But the fact of the matter is that HD View compensates for image viewers that fail to keep up the pace with the high resolution and dynamic range of large images. There is no faster way to ruin the experience delivered by a multi gigapixel panoramic image than to display shortcomings of an application that distort an image in order to render it in accordance to their limited capabilities.

"Recent advances in camera and sensor technology and software for stitching images together has led to the creation of images containing billions of pixels (gigapixels). These images are often panoramic, that is, they cover very wide fields of view. Since monitors typically contain only one to two million pixels, it is only possible to actually see 1/1000th of such image data at once. Also, viewing very wide fields of view require unwrapping of an image projected onto a curved surface (think of a map of the world) which can cause distortions," reads a message posted on the HD View Beta web page.

Johannes Kopf, Matt Uyttendaele, Howard Good, and Michael Cohen along with Jonathan Fay of the Next Media group are the persons involved in the HDView development. You will be able to get an idea of the software and hardware methodology that went into HD View in the Soapbox video fragment included at the bottom.

In Microsoft's vision, GHD View should "allow smooth panning and zooming on large images, only download enough data to create the current view, and always display the current field of view with an appropriate projection. This means that when zoomed way in you should be presented with a standard perspective projection providing a sense of immersion, and when zoomed out you experience a curved projection so that get a full overview of the scene. In between the projection should smoothly transition. Finally, it should be easy to create your own HD View content and present it to the world via the web."

Video: Creating and Viewing Gigapixel Images