The Photosynth photo visualization tool from Microsoft has just been released as a technology preview today. The web-based application lets you navigate through photos of a common location, viewing cities, buildings and surrounding scenes in 3-D. It's basically a way to explore a 3-D environment that's been built entirely with 2-D photos. Look at buildings from any angle, view multiple angles at once and compare similar photos of the same object.
I found the technology to be really impressive. The visual navigation is fluid and the way the app scans in and out of high resolution while you're zooming around is totally slick. You can try the technology preview at Microsoft Live Labs right now. Windows XP and Vista (running either IE6 or IE7) are supported right now.
