One of my favorite movies, ever, is ‘Blade Runner‘. I’d seen it in theaters when it opened (yes, it was a long time ago) and was surprised that it wasn’t more popular; it seemed to have a brief run, with little attention, and it sort of faded away.

It was (and still is, in fact) visually stunning, prophetic in many senses and it asks complex questions about the meaning and value of human life, what it is to really be human.

Today, though, I’m not going to offer a review or synopsis of the film. Instead, I thought it was worth mentioning that a little piece of the technology in the film may here, now.

For anyone who’s seen the movie, you remember the scene where Deckard uses a machine to examine the finest details and areas of a photograph, the results displayed on his screen as clear as the original photo, despite the enhancements. Of course, everyone now knows that simply enlarging an image in Photoshop results a poor-quality and pixelized file. Just about everyone will sneer knowingly when they see people in the movies or on TV use a satillite photo of an entire city to zoom in on the last 2 digits of the license plate on a car – without the slightest loss of image quality. *snicker*

Sure, I know that there may be some computers out there – the kind you can’t walk into a store and buy for $500 – that may do this. But for the rest of us, it’s a tired plot device: you just can’t change the image size 5000% and still have the same quality at 300 pixels/inch.

But Microsoft recently demonstrated software that could make fiction a reality:

“…one application allows viewers to zoom deep into gigantic, gigapixel panoramic images. A sweeping view of downtown Seattle and the Puget Sound can be enlarged to show diners sitting in the Space Needle. Another application constructs 3-D objects from hundreds of ordinary 2-D photographs, allowing the object to be explored from any angle.”

Photosynth combines a collection of still photos of an object and constructs a 3D model which allows viewers to “move” around the object, seeing it from any angle. According to the explanation behind the technology,

“…[I]t’s similar to depth perception - what your brain does to perceive the 3D positions of things in your field of view based on their images in both of your eyes.”

The other technology that was demonstrated at the International Virtual Reality Photography Conference was HD View, allowing for high-definition panoramic views through a browser. If you want to follow along with the Microsoft developers on this project, check out their blog for new info.