
This picture is worth a thousand pictures - abhimir
http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2012/10/04/hyper_photos_jean_fran_ois_rauzier_attempts_to_create_the_most_detailed_images_in_the_world_.html
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jrajav
tl;dr

Photographer stitches together thousands of photos as a two-dimensional
panorama. Very impressive and very beautiful, but the "hyperphoto"
nomenclature might be a bit bombastic.

Direct links to each photo:

<http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/cour-de-marbre/>

<http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/versaillesversailles/>

<http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/escalier-de-la-reine/>

[http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/versailles-city-hall-
stair...](http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/versailles-city-hall-stairs/)

<http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/cle_de_voutecle_de_voute/>

[http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/bibliotheques-
ideale-1bibl...](http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/bibliotheques-
ideale-1bibliotheques-ideale-1/)

<http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/telephones/>

~~~
ChuckMcM
While I agree, the term 'gigapixel image' seems to be off-putting for some.
The notion of an image you could zoom into forever like some of the Escher
works is interesting.

I say a 600 dpi color image (at scale) of an Italian balcony at some event at
the Bellagio, it was pretty impressive.

~~~
kcl
Ken Perlin has done some interesting work on the subject:
<http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/experiments/demox/Planet.html>

It is a render of a randomly-seeded "Earth" that supports zooming. You can
zoom in continuously to recursively expanding island formations. The
formations are not random, in the sense that they are not decided on the fly.
They are fixed based on the original seed and will stay the same if you come
back to the same location. So the trick resembles displaying a map that takes
up a huge amount of memory, even though that isn't really the case. As I
recall the limits of the zoom have something to do with the width of floating
point.

Apologies to Ken if I inaccurately described his demo. He usually makes the
source available for download but I don't see how to get it here.

~~~
shashashasha
Wow, until now I had not thought to look up where the name Perlin noise came
from, but wow! Thank you!

(for others, Perlin noise powers much of motion graphics effects today
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise>, like such:
<http://www.flashandmath.com/flashcs5/fire/fire.html>)

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001sky
Cool pics, but not sure how much innovation there is here. _He takes
additional liberties with the images, duplicating sections in symmetrical ways
to create elegantly surrealist landscapes._ It is alot harder (ironcially) to
do large scale and make it look "normal." Ie. he's masking some of the real
difficulty, one of which is alluded to in the piece: _Since the light changes
as he shoots, matching colors presents another challenge._ Subtle things like
inconsistent light make Going beyond "uncanny valley" very difficult. But
using an "Alice in Wonderland" (hall of mirrors, etc) effect/approach helps
subvert the issue.

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ochiba
The last picture of the gorillas and the cell phones reminds me of _Running
the Numbers - An American Self-Portrait_ by Chris Jordan, which is one of the
most amazing things I've seen for putting numbers into perspective (in this
case using detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs)

<http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/>

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LarrySDonald
I was a little disappointed by the lack of resolution. I remember seeing some
of these, one with mindblowing resolution. As the article states "You can see
a closeup of the statues nose" it turns out.. you can't. You can see a full-
screen of the statue itself, but that's about as far as it goes. While that's
impressive, it's hardly cutting edge and overselling it makes it more
disappointing than just presenting it.

~~~
lnanek2
I'm wondering if their server is just overloaded. It's like when you zoom in
using Google Maps, the map tiles get a quick ugly resize, then get replaced as
more detailed data is downloaded. At least for me, trying these flash photos,
zooming in is immediately unclear and nothing ever replaces them with clearer.
I suspect it's just server problems, though.

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cochese
These pictures are so overexposed my brain has difficulty parsing them. Detail
like this is not what is expected in photography, but the subject is.

A truly great photo is not about what you found, but what is already there.
[http://ia.media-
imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTU4OTI3MDk4MV5BMl5Ban...](http://ia.media-
imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTU4OTI3MDk4MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNjgyMzM2._V1._SX331_SY450_.jpg)

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davidcollantes
Flash is required. If you do not have it (nor use it), like me, you will not
be able to see much.

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dopamean
If MC Escher took photographs.

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paul_milligram
Wasn't Microsoft Research working on a technology similar to the 'hyperphoto'?
It collated numerous photographs of the same location and allowed the viewer
to navigate through multiple dimensions of the space.

~~~
ryanmolden
You mean this: <http://photosynth.net/>

based on this: [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/Ph...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/PhotoTours/)

------
simanek
Some of the clipping paths/layer edges on the first one are pretty rough
toward the top. But a neat idea. It’s really more a collage than a
“hyperphoto”. David Hockney – more known for his paintings than his
photography – has done something similar, but with an emphasis on the image
being composed of multiple photographs, not attempting to create the illusion
of one continuous photo: <http://www.hockneypictures.com>

------
lnanek2
A 3D game company should hire him so we can walk around inside those things.
:)

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__dontom__
If you want something to scroll into check out
<http://www.360cities.net/london-photo-en.html>

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gwf
<http://zoom.it/> is much older, seems much faster, and you can create your
own.

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mathattack
Thanks for sharing. I thought it would be awful, but it was deeply profound in
a strange way.

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interg12
I'd like to make these desktop pictures - any suggestions on how to get the
files?

~~~
Lifescape
Found what I believe to be the source files for the Versailles picture:
[http://www.hyper-
photo.com/hyperpano/versailles/panojfr.tile...](http://www.hyper-
photo.com/hyperpano/versailles/panojfr.tiles/)

I think it's sorted by resolution levels. So for example all photos with
l1_#_#.jpg are at the lowest resolution while photos with l5_#_#.jpg are at
the highest. The higher the resolution, the more photos at that resolution
there will be.

To get a high resolution background of the whole image, you'd take all the
splices at a certain resolution and put them together.

Does anyone know if there's an easy way to do this? Thanks!

------
macey
Very cool. Pixels aside, even. Very visually interesting art.

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thechut
Zoig...crashed

~~~
jrajav
I thought so too but it finally loaded for me after several minutes and 125mb
of memory. Could use a bit of lazy loading, I think.

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username3
Panning is a pain.

~~~
meatsock
no need to pan panning

~~~
dredmorbius
pan-pan pan-pan pan-pan!

All Stations!

~~~
eric_bullington
Sailor, or pilot?

~~~
dredmorbius
Astrogator.

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jsjohnst
This has been done for years to produce gigapixel images. In fact, there's
even commercial hardware to make them easier to make (see:
<http://gigapan.com>). As this made headline news when it was done for
President Obama's inauguration back in January of 2009 (among other examples),
can someone clue me in on why Slate thought this was novel or new?

~~~
moultano
Did you read the article, or look at the pictures? They aren't simple
panoramas.

~~~
jsjohnst
Yes, and yes... Did you make the same comment on the other people focusing on
the panorama portion of it over the art portion?

