Timesink For The Day: Microsoft’s Interactive Billion-Pixel Image Of Seattle

Working together with more than a hundred local artists and performers, Microsoft created an interactive billion-pixel image of Seattle, claiming that this project is the best of its kind. True enough, an interactive billion-pixel image is not something you see every day; and given the size of this image, you’ll probably need more than a day to see everything there is to see.

Called the “Seattle Gigapixel ArtZoom project”, the work Microsoft put into this thing is nothing to scoff at. Take a look at some numbers:

• 2,368 twenty-two-megapixel images make up the full panorama
• that’s equivalent to two 10-gigapixel half panoramas

Given that, there was already a LOT of detail captured, except that the images were still lacking in terms of real people, which we know a city like Seattle has a lot of.

So what did the team do? They went back to the spot where they had taken the initial images, using a Canon digital SLR with lenses ranging from 400 mm to 600 mm.

This is where the artists and performers come in, as they were the focal point of this part of the shoot. To get the final result – 20 gigapixels (20,000 megapixels) and super high-resolution 360-degree panorama – they had to combine all the material they gathered.

No sweat for pros, yeah?

As for us mere mortals who have a tendency to get distracted by shiny, interactive things, the “Seattle Gigapixel ArtZoom project” is a treasure trove. The creators even scattered Easter Eggs all over the place – just because they could. And, in case you don’t have enough patience to discover those Easter Eggs yourself, here is a handful to look out for.

Have fun, and don’t forget you have some work to do!

Oh, and if you want more details on how the image was created, here is a video to satisfy your curiosity.

[Images via Daily Mail]