After all of the speculation regarding what extraordinary thing was coming from Microsoft, we now know that the WorldWide Telescope is “it.” Robert Scoble confirmed this yesterday and reiterated that people who have not seen the demo will think that a telescope is lame. He says, “like I said, it isn’t the product that’s impressive. You’ve gotta see this thing to really understand.” His demo will be available on Monday.
At the TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference which is currently going on, Microsoft made a presentation (embedded below) on the WWT and while the video doesn’t actually show a great demo of it, we do get an idea of what it’s all about from the presenters. Before we get into some of the comments the presenter made, first we’ll explain further what it is. According to the official website:
The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe.
WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft’s high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience.
The presenter made these points about the telescope:
- It will change the way we teach astronomy
- It will change the way we see ourselves in the universe
- Will enable users to experience the universe – “it’s like a magic carpet” he says
- Allows users to tour the universe with astronomers as your guide — and it’s not just experts who are telling you what you’re seeing but people who are truly passionate about what they do
- Users can create their own tours to share with friends and family
- While viewing tours (already created tours of self-made) users can zoom-in or pull back out
- Tours are interactive and can be paused along the way
Curtis Wong from Microsoft eventually made it to the microphone and said that they hope this telescope will inspire kids of all ages to explore the universe. It’ll be available this Spring as a free download and will be found at www.worldwidetelescope.org. Now I can’t wait to see a great demo of it in action…
Source: I Started Something
Maybe is the first of a new generation of research applications.
@Ashley:
Nice presentation for passionate stargazers. As far as I’m concerned, I think I’ll pass. I’m afraid conceptions like the Big Bang, the Milky Way, telescopes or Astronomy are not my cup of tea. I prefer more earthly constructs like Firefox, iPhone, the Internet or computers.
Regards,
Omar.-
Looks cool but how are they going to make money off of this?
It’s impressive for sure, and I love it, but how is this different from Google Earth’s “Sky” option?
Ok, seriously, for something so hyped up, I was expecting something absolutely ridiculous like 4D, time travel, or something like that. Not a goddamn telescope.
Christ, Scoble.
At this point, they’re not. There’s no business model behind this. Just like how Google has several different services that bring them no money, not even from ads.
I think we’ll find that out once it actually gets released. I’m curious about this as well.
There’s nothing wrong with preferring those earthly constructs.
to me it is very impressive, but i believe it is more of a teaching tool, that might not even be (very) academic, then anything else. i’ll doubt if ET will pop up in any of the tours.
it sounds a bit like Photosynth ([labs.live.com]) for the sky, which from what i can guess, might be harder to do because of the nature and size of information. which it make it even more special.
today, with things like googleearth used by terrorists around the world, not to mention the regular Joe, something similar of the sky might not impress us, or many of us anyway, but it is a major step in the field of photo analysis. so keep up the great work Microsoft. at least in this areas you are doing something right.
I hate it when they make a big splash around the world about something new and then we find out it will be released sometime…this spring. With big announcements should come the final product at the same time. So, Microsoft, is it March, April, May? You must know when. Email me and tell me if you will….RJ
It is frustrating when there’s no specific date, but at least they narrowed it down to a season instead of saying “sometime this year.”