Panoramio's Blog

Hi, look around!

June 3rd, 2008 by Eduardo Manchón

We just released a new feature in Panoramio that allows you to browse photos simulating a 3D environment. You can jump from one photo to the closest one, walking virtually around the place or watching the place from many different perspectives. Enjoy the views from the top of Empire State in New York, the last floor of Eiffel Tower or the sights from the Pyramids of Teotihuacan, just by opening the “look around” link under those photos.

look around of St Peter Square in Rome

I just made a small walk in St Peter square in Rome and watched the panoramic views of Alhambra from Albaicín. Did you ever watch the faces of the US presidents in Mount Rushmore so close?. There is a never ending list of places to explore: the roofs of Lisbon from Santa Justa, Chicago from Hancock’s tower by night, the sights of Stockholm from Katarinahissen, the Red Square of Moscow, Brandenburg gate in Berlin, the white marbles of Taj Mahal or the Sydney Opera House, just to mention a few examples. Take care, I am already addicted.

You will find the link “look around” only for photos in areas with high density of images. The most interesting places to “look around” are squares, towers or any location where people took photo in many different directions. Having many overlapped photos means that you can move very far away from the starting point, almost like a real walk.

If you want to get a “look around” link under your photos or you would like to have this experience in your favorite place, that’s easy. Just go to that place and start shooting photos in every direction. Photos should overlap so the matching system can work and using a tripod should help to get matches. If you prefer to move while taking photos, later it would be possible to follow your path. Photos of details get embedded inside wide perspectives and allow a nice zoom-in effect. Depends very much on the place, but around 10-20 photos should be enough to get the “look around”. The link will not appear immediately, the system will be initially refreshed every two weeks, but it will get faster after some time.

Filed under: panoramio, new features / improvements   |  

45 Responses to “Hi, look around!”  

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  1. 1 Edu on Jun 3rd, 2008 said:

    Simplemente, genial.

    Os felicito por los pasos certeros que estáis dando. Y seguro que seguiréis pisando fuerte, tras la salida del plugin para google earth sobre navegadores. ¿Podremos disfrutar de navegación 3D en entornos simulados a partir de coincidencias en sus puntos (como me comentaba wolo)?

    (Por cierto, y en otro orden de cosas, que hoy estuve ojeando las apis de google y ví una para incrustar un botón de upload al cliente de Picasa. A partir de ese botón pueden subirse automáticamente fotos seleccionadas directamente a páginas webs… Siento insistir en la compatibilidad picasa-panoramio, pero sería un adelanto).

    Seguro que sí.

    Un saludo.

  2. 2 John Doe on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    What are the most efficient ways to add photos to Panoramio:

    1) with the aid of a GPS device such as a GPS-enabled camera

    2) without a GPS device

  3. 3 Sam on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    I found this interesting…
    http://openphotovr.jottit.com/re_panoramio

  4. 4 Terrablau on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    Cool feature! However a bit confusing to use. :-)

  5. 5 Galena on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    “We just released a new feature in Panoramio”? ?
    You ought to be ashamed of yourself!
    You are second.
    The first is Vladimir Slepnev - http://openphotovr.jottit.com/re_panoramio

  6. 6 Gibrail on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    Great Idea!

  7. 7 zerega on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    Another one: The Tomb Raider scene: a large tree growing out of a temple of Ta Prohm in Angkor:

    http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3660960

    This one is interesting, for its revolves around a single entrance from hugely different viewpoints. Not all available images are displayed in the thumbnails tab all the time, so you have to search a bit in the look around window [b]and[/b] use sometimes the thumbnails to find all images:

    http://www.panoramio.com/photo/2272917

  8. 8 kristo.ch on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    Felicidades. Esta es una de las mejores cosas que he visto nunca.

  9. 9 kristo.ch on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    Congratulations. This is one of the best things I’ve ever seen

  10. 10 Mark.Taiwan on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    I loved the feature, I’m amazed by the number of places already have this new feature (especially compared to Microsoft’s Photosynth).
    My only problem is that maybe due to my internet connection and the fact that I live in Taiwan, each photo takes quite a while to download, maybe it’s possible to add a preload feature?

  11. 11 Leon O on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    psst! don’t tell anyone, but it looks a bit like microsoft’s 3D bird’s eye view in Live maps! BUT BETTER!

  12. 12 Adam on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    Did you take this from http://openphotovr.org ? If so, it would be nice to give credit where it’s due…

  13. 13 Jose A Leon on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    Hola,

    Great feature Eduardo. Thanks a lot.

    Jose

  14. 14 Antares on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    WOW! impresionante pero, como lo hacéis? alguna especificación técnica sobre en que lenguaje o que algoritmo?

  15. 15 fer on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    Give Credit Where Credit is Due:

    http://openphotovr.jottit.com/re_panoramio

  16. 16 Rasmus Bjerner on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    It is very very cool. You must have some very good software to do it… :-)
    Did you make the software for it yourself or did you use some third party software?

  17. 17 Emerson Ricardo Zamprogno on Jun 4th, 2008 said:

    Maravilloso!

    Espero que sea integrado tambien a Google Earth!

    Wonderful!

    I hope it gets integrated with Google Earth as well!

  18. 18 Juraj Misina on Jun 5th, 2008 said:

    I simply LOVE it! Thanks a lot, very nice job done here.

  19. 19 uhmm on Jun 5th, 2008 said:

    Will it be available in… Google Earth?

  20. 20 Marina) on Jun 6th, 2008 said:

    This feature was the final reason for me to register in this project.

    Good job.

  21. 21 David on Jun 6th, 2008 said:

    wooow !, felicidades al equipo de Panoramio.
    Muy bien Edu, eso es innovar… ahora estaría bien que se pudieran grabar videos de las panoramicas que se vayan ofreciendo con esta nueva funcionnalidad.
    Saludos, nos vemos en Barcelona pronto.
    David

  22. 22 albertobastos on Jun 6th, 2008 said:

    Fantastic, incredible, awesome… I could spent too much time using that new feature. Congratulations!

  23. 23 masssu on Jun 6th, 2008 said:

    Po prostu świetne kocham was postaram się porobić parę fotek i przetestować ten system :)

    Simply great love you try to porobić few photos and test this system:)

  24. 24 Geotec on Jun 8th, 2008 said:

    Hola: Me parece una idea acertada. Me recuerda mucho al producto Microsoft Photosynth. He hecho una reseña en mi blog y os incluyo algunas críticas constructivas.

    Hi, I think it’s a great idea. It remember too much the MSN’s product called Photosynth. I wrote a review in my blog where I added some constructive criticisms.

    http://geotecnocom.blogspot.com/2008/06/360-de-mosaico-fotografico.html

    ¿Tenéis pensado exportarlo a Google Earth? Seguro que allí se obtiene una experiencia de uso mucho más realista, mucho más 3D.

    Are you thinking to export GE? I am sure there it would become a richer and realistic experience. A real 3D, I mean.

    Muchos ánimos.

    Best wishes.

  25. 25 pereshaped on Jun 8th, 2008 said:

    Please forgive my naivity as I might have missed something, but stitching panoramas is quite an old thing and standard in photoshop. How is this new? There are lots of stiched pans on here already(?), P

  26. 26 rizal akbar on Jun 9th, 2008 said:

    great !! faster than photosynth..and no need to install (^_^)

  27. 27 deepeye on Jun 10th, 2008 said:

    Eduardo
    ¡Muchas gracias por su asistancia! me gusto esta adicón muy servicial.

  28. 28 Mikihiro on Jun 11th, 2008 said:

    Felicidades Panoramio, cada día nos sorprende más.

  29. 29 blonder on Jun 13th, 2008 said:

    Very, very nice feature. I saw a demo of Microsoft Photosynth a few weeks ago, it was alike. This is the best thing I ever seen.

    Congratulations.

  30. 30 pianoman4Jesus on Jun 14th, 2008 said:

    Bravo!

    Panoramio is now more than a nice place to share panorama photos, compiled with a tool such as Auto Stitch. So, perhaps I will start taking such shots and see if the magic happens to any of my photo spots! ;-)

  31. 31 robbie on Jun 15th, 2008 said:

    wonderful!

  32. 32 Ivan on Jun 15th, 2008 said:

    Amazing… in the pure tech vision - how do you calculate the images position and relationship from one to another? Some kind of image recognition?

  33. 33 Luigi Taccetta on Jun 16th, 2008 said:

    Congratulation, very interesting idea!

  34. 34 tzc on Jun 17th, 2008 said:

    This is quite similar to m$’s photosynth, but much faster :) Good job google!

  35. 35 wald-traut on Jun 18th, 2008 said:

    thats really a cool feature! hope the look-around-places will become more soon …. and I hope people will load up more detail-pics now, so you can really explore far places!

  36. 36 Till on Jun 18th, 2008 said:

    unfortunately here it doesn’t word in Firefox. only in MSIE.

  37. 37 Drew Takahashi on Jun 19th, 2008 said:

    Is the meshing of photos done automatically? Can I manually place shots in that might be hard for an automated system to add in. I want to have pictures that are the same place but historical. Since they document change I would have to manually match the photos into the contemporary collage.

  38. 38 KaBu on Jun 20th, 2008 said:

    Wow Panoramio team, this feature is really innovative and WORKING. Congratulations.

  39. 39 androo on Jun 21st, 2008 said:

    I’ve just discovered this feature whilst changing the position of one of my photos from Piazza San Marco, Venezia. This is yet another stunning innovation from Panoramio. I congratulate you, Eduardo…

    My technical mind asks, however, “How is this done?” Is there an automatic image/data matching algorithm that compares and ‘geo-syncs’ the individual images? That’s my guess.

    However you do it, well done.

    Andrew.

  40. 40 michael habla on Jun 22nd, 2008 said:

    dear panoramio people,

    it would be a feat to create a dedicated tab to the look-around feature next to the “tags” tab in the opening screen.

    best regards to all !

    michael

  41. 41 IPAAT on Jun 25th, 2008 said:

    I express my admiration for those who glued virtual panoramas - very quality and very accurately!

    (For moderators - sorry about my previous anonymous comment)

  42. 42 Sjc Heslop on Jul 3rd, 2008 said:

    As stated above, I agree this is one of the best things i’ve seen on the internet. Well done indeed.

  43. 43 QueenDrakula on Jul 16th, 2008 said:

    Cool feature!!! I discovered it today, it’s great!!!!!

  44. 44 tirino on Aug 12th, 2008 said:

    Way all photos with the same subject have not write”look around”also if are published from along time? Ciao Adriana

  45. 45 Rumlin on Aug 26th, 2008 said:

    Unfortunately “look around” difficult to find in photo album. Today, accidentally discovered this feature for my photography ID: 3653814.
    It would be better if the tag would automatically appear “look around” for such photos.

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