Blogs

3D Robotics

Microsoft ICE: a free PTGui killer?

Posted by Chris Anderson on April 30, 2011 at 4:11pm

3689404659?profile=originalI've been using the PTGui software ($121) for years to stitch together aerial shots into composite mosaics, but noticed in Krzysztof Bosak's post that Microsoft Research had something called ICE that could be an alternative. I checked it out and it's fanstastic!

 

Micosoft ICE is free, fast, easy to use and in my experience much more accurate than PTGui. Highly recommended.

 

E-mail me when people leave their comments –
Follow

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Comments

  • Developer
    John Arne Birkeland May 1, 2011 at 6:06am

    Krzysztof:

    Woo, let's be careful with how we use reverse engineering and the word illegal in the same sentence. That last line can easily be misunderstood. Miss-using DLL's (with limited rights) without a licensing is illegal as you say, but this is not reverse engineering. Reverse engineering a technology and making your own substitute (from scratch) is still very much legal and a corner stone of engineering. I am not trying to be anal, but let's not help spread the common misconceptions about reverse engineering and legality.

    On a brighter side. I was not aware about MS ICE so thank you for bringing it to my attention. Very impressive and fast when it works, but as you say it has a hit or miss approach since there is no way to manually override a wrong composition. I also notice that is can do video compositions. Have you experimented with ground surface mapping using video?

  • T3
    Krzysztof Bosak May 1, 2011 at 4:07am

    "@ Chris, I believe Microsoft released an app for the iPhone that uses the same technology to make panoramas. Its called Photosynth."

    Completely unrelated. Photosynth makes 3D pointclouds. Impossible to derive one from another just by amateur juggling of components. Those are 2 separate processing chains.

    having said that,

    I have surface synths here

    http://photosynth.net/userprofilepage.aspx?user=kbosak&content=...

     

    "I’ve also had good luck with ICE when imaging smaller areas;"

    Remember ICE is NOT licenced for commercial use. In short you cannot use it for work without written agreement from MS. Using DLLs not licenced for interfacing is reverse-engineering and is illegal.

  • Ryan Kunde April 30, 2011 at 8:11pm

    Here's a link to a free Multispectral Image Data Analysis program from Purdue: 

    Purdue/LARS MultiSpec

    MultiSpec© | Home
    A Freeware Multispectral Image Data Analysis System
  • Ryan Kunde April 30, 2011 at 8:01pm
    I’ve also had good luck with ICE when imaging smaller areas; the program couldn’t be faster or easier. In ArcGis I did a georeferencing comparison of my ICE stitched image to a high altitude aerial photo (that should have little tilt and consistent scale). Surprisingly, my ICE image had a slightly better (lower) RMS (residual mean square) value (1.15), to the control points than did the high altitude aerial photo! Meaning, the ICE stitched image was not badly distorted for my area of interest. However, the edges of the images are always badly skewed. This is due to using the Planar or Rotating Motion settings, using the Structured Panorama feature should fix this shortcoming. Now if I could only fly a coordinated pattern…
  • narwhal April 30, 2011 at 6:46pm
    Is there anyway to interface to ICE via a program?
  • Matt April 30, 2011 at 6:13pm
    @ Chris, I believe Microsoft released an app for the iPhone that uses the same technology to make panoramas. Its called Photosynth.
  • T3
    Krzysztof Bosak April 30, 2011 at 4:21pm

    Well rather complementary thing. PTGUI is almost free when you consider how it works. ICE works when it works, when it doesn't, you cannot do anything but throw files again into the lottery machine.

    PTGUI on the other hand with serious amount of labour can save even hopeless stitch from being useless.

    BTW ICE likes quadcores or more.

This reply was deleted.