Microsoft's telescope looks beyond space

REDMOND, Wash.--One of the key things in Microsoft's new WorldWide Telescope software has nothing to do with space.

Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope software offers several different ways to look at the heavens, including the Hydrogen Alpha view.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)

The software uses a new Microsoft "visual experience engine" to gather and stitch together images from multiple data sets as well as allow a variety of users to author their own guided tour. While space was a good area to try out the technology, principal researcher Curtis Wong notes that it's not the final frontier for the visual experience engine.

"It's a core one to start with," he said, but noted that the idea of sharing a guided tour through a digital experience will have broader uses.

The technology has lived inside Microsoft's research group, but is moving on to one or more product groups within the company, though Wong said he couldn't give more details.

I'll have a variety of other postings from my tour through TechFest that will go up either later Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. Later this week, I'll also have a video interview with Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer.

And, like many of the reporters at TechFest, I'm on a flight Tuesday night to Las Vegas to start posting bright and early Wednesday morning from the Mix 08 show.

[j_a_s_p_e_r]

Photosynth?

Is this this photosynth or an expansion on it?

[rdgadz]

sounds like it

think they might be changing the name of it?

[coryschulz]

I'd bet it is

It sounds like Photosynth. I'd be surprised if it was anything else.

[Hernys]

Not exactly

Photosynth is based on several technologies, some related to assembling 2D pictures in a 3D space, and some related to zooming and scaling pictures composed of multiresoultuion blocks.
The WWT seems to be using part of the later (which is from a project apparently preceding photosynth) but not the former.