In connection with its new series, How We Built Britain (BBC1) and Britain in Pictures (BBC Four), the BBC is collecting viewers' pictures for 3-D displays using Microsoft's Photosynth software.
This doesn't magically make your snaps three dimensional: it's more of a "virtual tourism" idea. The Microsoft Live Labs site at http://labs.live.com/photosynth/bbc/ says:
Imagine hundreds of photos of the same building being seamlessly stitched together to create an experience where the user can follow their own path zooming in to see the smallest decorative detail or zooming out and panning through 360 to place the building in a wider context.
However, you can't just upload snaps of your cute cats for this particular bit. The BBC's photosynth project is limited to half a dozen major locations: Ely Cathedral, Blackpool Tower Ballroom, Burghley House, Royal Crescent, Bath, Trafalgar Square and Edinburgh's new Scottish Parliament Building.
Photosynth uses the new Microsoft graphics system, Windows Presentation Foundation, so the 3-D bit only works with Windows XP SP2 and Vista, and a Vista-capable graphics card is recommended. The browser plug-in runs in IE6, IE7, Firefox 1.5 and Firefox 2.0. (The capabilities are also being added to Silverlight, which should make it available to Mac users.)
A BBC Bus will visit five of the locations starting at Ely Cathedral on June 10, 10am-4pm, replacing Trafalgar Square with Tower Bridge. (Bath isn't on the list: has that been done?) It will be running photographic masterclasses and the BBC site says: "Take your photographs of the location and upload the best ones to the BBC Britain in Pictures gallery."
The photo galleries will also be available on red-button digital TV -- Sky, Freeview and Cable.
