With the latest update introduced to Photosynth, Microsoft has scrapped the now traditional Direct 3D viewer for a Silverlight UX that spans both Windows and Mac OS X. The Redmond-based company indicated that the shift to the new Silverlight experimental viewer was designed to precisely make the service available to as many people as possible via the cross-platform experience. In addition to the Photosynth viewer shuffle, Microsoft is now also providing Silverlight embedding code for synths, promising that the move will allow users to reach more people than before.

“Our goal has always been to share the Photosynth experience with as many people as possible, but our Direct 3D viewer hasn’t been friendly to our Mac friends. We’ve been working on our Silverlight experimental viewer and I’m excited to say we’re promoting it to be the main viewer for Photosynth. This will allow PC and Mac users to not only view synths but join in the rest of the Photosynth community by leaving comments, marking favorite synths and getting to know their fellow synthers,” revealed a member of the Photosynth team.

Still, Microsoft continues to allow access to the old Direct3D Viewer. This is possible through the View Synth in Direct3D Viewer option on synth pages – bottom left. The new Photosynth Silverlight-based experimental viewer comes with overhauled controls that have been repositioned to the center bottom of the screen in accordance with user feedback. With the latest refresh, Photosynth now allows users to highlight synths in order to deliver an enhanced user navigation experience.

“Moving to the Silverlight viewer might look like a step back in performance because of the lower frame rate and delayed point cloud density… but this move has allowed us to take two leaps forward. We’re now able to allow Mac users to fully participate on our website and we can build editing and highlights features right into the viewer code. We haven’t written off performance for these two new benefits. Our team is working hard on improving performance so that the Silverlight viewer can not only be more feature rich than the D3D viewer but be equally high performance if not better,” the Photosynth team representative added.


Silverlight 3 Beta 3 is available for download here.