Well, it would be if it existed. I'm talking about Microsoft's Photosynth...and it is on it's way (though it will certainly be a while). 

I mentioned this in a blog a ways back (as I believe others have).

However, I just wanted to take a moment to illustrate how photosynth could very well change the face of how homes are marketed online.

Most homes these days are marketed online with a mix of static images (photographs), virtual tours, video, photo slideshows, and of course a text description.

Photosynth has the potential to replace all of the visual items at once.

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What the program does is take a group of photos of the same location, analyzes them for points of reference and then builds a 3D model of them. If that isn't impressive enough it allows you to move through the 'space' with seamless ease.

You can see a simplified version of it in action here:

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

Here's the interesting part. Since you can use an unlimited amount of photos to generate the environment (in fact, more is better), you can have a wide shot of say a kitchen, and multiple 'zoomed' shots of details (cabinets, fictures etc).

The buyer could then turn, go forward, backward, 'move in closer' where ever they wanted to see more detail about a room.  Almost as if they were there!

Done well, a potential buyer could move through the entire house, perhaps even the property...all at photographic quality.

If it sounds too good to be true...well...

We probably won't see this software for a good while. It's only a tech demonstration right now. Furthermore, it takes a lot of juice to compile and it takes a lot of photos to do correctly as well (which is good news for us photographers *wink*).

Still, I think it has the potential to be the killer app when it comes to 'virtual tours'. Something to keep your eye on.

Cheers, -B

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It's pretty diffiicult to 'show this in action' (you should go to the site if you are interested in seeing it work). However, here are a few captures from the space shuttle pad.

Please note, these photos are obviously not mine - they are the property of microsoft, nasa, and the photographers respectively. :)

The 'dots' in the black area represents common points between photos. The gray 'border' you can see in some images is the selector for seeing different views (the tech demo isn't seamless yet).

You can see I moved my viewpoint around the launchpad, to a different view and finally zoomed way out to see the entire setting, all different complete photos.

Cool!