Photosynth Comes To Live Maps

There’s a new feature now available on Live Maps: Photosynth! The Microsoft Live Labs technology, Photosynth, which launched publicly back in August, allows you take your photos and turn them into rich, 3-D experiences. Now, with the new Live Maps integration, you can explore the world in the very same way as you explored your own synthed photos.

As you navigate in a map or zoom in or out in a particular location in Live Maps, you can choose to display pushpins for each Photosynth available in that area. You then just click the “launch Photosynth viewer” link to dive in and start exploring those synths.

You can try this now in Seattle, in Cairo at the Sphinx, in Vatican city, or at the Leaning tower of Pisa, for example.

The Sphinx – Cairo, Egypt

Photosynths are not shown by default in Live Maps, but are a part of the user-generated collections feature. Turning them on is easy, though - here’s how:

1) Search for for any location where synths may be available or manually drag your map there. Try “Paris,” for example.

2) Turn on Explore mode (Click Collections –> Explore collections). This turns on all the user-generated content, not just synths.

3) Filter to display just synths: At the top of the Explore panel, press the Photosynth button.

4) Now you’ll see just the synths display.

5) Enjoy!

Note: to explore Photosynths, you must have already installed the Photosynth viewer found here.