Beta 2 of HD View has been released, now supporting Firefox! This is great news. The MS research team is on track to create not only the panoramic viewer of the future, but to establish a platform for an entirely new viewing experience for large (gigapixel, if you like) images. Yes, this is all based on (evil) Microsoft Technology (HD Photo, see here, here and here), but the technological leadership is apparent and the benefits for panoramic viewing are undeniable. Being able to just stitch megapixel images into one large image, upload it and (after the server side determines the viewing parameters) being able to view it in a fast viewer serving just the pertinent pixels, is a whole new ball game for online panoramic image viewing. And it should be easy to eventually create a fully automatic stitcher working on the server side (at least for wide angle images in cylindrical projection) finally making online panorama sharing a popular pastime.
Aug 11
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