One of my tasks when I visited Kurumba last week was to get a boat and circumnavigate the island taking pictures to create a Maldives Photosynth. Thanks to the kind assistance of Andreas Ronecker of the Unlimited Watersports centre there, I got a full set of photos. Unfortunately, being my first go at a Photosynth, my ‘synth’ didn’t turn out as great as I would have liked. I didn’t get enough pictures for the calculation engine to map and model the island effectively. My ‘synthy’ measure was a low 12% so not many of the picture groups joined into a whole. Though you can take the tour around the ocean perimeter of the island using the ‘slide show’ function.
Not too worry, Maldive resorts are becoming more and more popular subjects for Photosynth and the Microsoft gallery now has 32 uploaded. Photosynth is sort of more than a 360 degree virtual tour. Because it builds a 3D model of the subject, you can really explore and get a sense of dimension and scale.