Comments on: An 8.6 gigapixel stitched image of an Italian fresco

An 8.6 gigapixel stitched image of an Italian fresco

tellurian — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:05:54 -0800

This [very slow loading, but persevere, it's worth it] website "probably" contains the biggest digital image in the world. Some details are here.

By: nadawi

nadawi — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:12:19 -0800

Holy crap, that's cool!

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:12:46 -0800

Slow loading? No fucking way, man, I'm not going there. Fugghiddaboutit. No time for that. Awww... ok, I'm going there now.

By: Joey Michaels

Joey Michaels — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:18:58 -0800

Actually, that is surprisingly cool.

By: Flashman

Flashman — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:23:12 -0800

Hey! Ho! Fresco!

By: davehat

davehat — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:23:25 -0800

what's the image size? I only have a (very flaky) 128k connection, how long will I have to wait?

By: three blind mice

three blind mice — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:24:31 -0800

Very cool tellurian, but that audio track is friggin' annoying. 8,6 gigapixels IS very huge indeed.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:27:26 -0800

how long will I have to wait? Well, you'll have time to read some Bible chapters, which will come in handy for interpreting the image once it finally appears on your screen. And that is pretty impressive. Nice interface for moving around and zooming in, too. But yeah, that music... mute is highly recommended.

By: lorbus

lorbus — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:31:37 -0800

Interesting thing to note: if you zoom without moving anything you go straight to Jesus' bits.

By: bunglin jones

bunglin jones — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:34:18 -0800

This is great. Thanks

By: davehat

davehat — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:53:05 -0800

Well, you'll have time to read some Bible chapters Its a good thing I live in a house with 100+ bibbles in it then... I guess I'll have to skip this for now. Which fresco is it? about those bibbles... I rent a house from a missionary, she never cleared her stuff out

By: sophist

sophist — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:59:19 -0800

nice

By: nearo

nearo — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 03:03:44 -0800

OK, someone calculate the file size and then multiply that by the little hit counter at the bottom, 11k or so far. i am curious what kind of bandwidth they are pushing for this thing.

By: rom1

rom1 — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 03:07:57 -0800

It's not that slow loading...

By: rom1

rom1 — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 03:12:41 -0800

You can even buy (reserve only for the moment actually) a high-res 125x80cm print of this masterpiece on the website for EUR40.

By: fvw

fvw — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 03:26:41 -0800

They're serving up the image segments on demand, so unless you're looking at each segment of the image at full zoom you're not downloading the entire image. Great user interface though, simple and effective. So rare to find flash interfaces like that.

By: Colloquial Collision

Colloquial Collision — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 03:27:35 -0800

Very nice.

By: Herr Fahrstuhl

Herr Fahrstuhl — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 03:32:42 -0800

nearo, since they aren't pushing out the 8.6 GP tu every visitor, I'd suppose bandwith isn't that costly, especially since we're dealing with a static image (rather than a video). There is probably a heavy load on the web server's CPU though, since the server seems to receive requests from the client for specific areas of the pictures which it probably has to extract from the actual 8.6 GP image at runtime (well, there is quite likely some caching going on).

By: Mumbly

Mumbly — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 03:49:13 -0800

Hi, I am a commited Christian and find all this quite blasphemous. I thought you could be thrown off this site for this sort of talk. It really offends me.

By: twistedonion

twistedonion — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 03:52:50 -0800

you signed up for that comment? havin a laugh?

By: uncle harold

uncle harold — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 03:57:35 -0800

What is blasphemous - looking at a fresco? *confused*

By: Mumbly

Mumbly — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:02:19 -0800

I thought I was focussing on the comments. No names were mentioned. I have only just joined, and was looking forward to some clean, interesting dialogue.

By: Optamystic

Optamystic — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:04:40 -0800

Mumbly, I haven't the slightest clue what you're offended about, but we have a saying around here: "Flag it and move on". That means if something bothers you, then click on the exclamation point to the left of the offending comment. If the comment is truly offensive, then others will flag it as well. Once a certain number of people have flagged a comment, the admins are notified and they can take appropriate action

By: Optamystic

Optamystic — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:06:09 -0800

er...exclamation point to the right, that is.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:06:12 -0800

was looking forward to some clean, interesting dialogue. Are you pulling MeFi's collective leg? There's plenty of interesting dialogue (well, some anyway), but... clean? Huh?

By: fluffycreature

fluffycreature — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:07:29 -0800

It's using Zoomify, which means it's only loading pieces of it at a time. It's a nifty product and allows exactly this type of display with large images. The bottom line is not that much is being pushed at any given time.

By: XMLicious

XMLicious — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:09:57 -0800

awwww, c'mon... if stitched images count then things like Google Maps' satellite images win as the biggest, it'll display at however big you can set your browser window.

By: Mumbly

Mumbly — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:17:04 -0800

Seems as if I got the wrong end of the stick. My apologies. I have just re read it all, sorry about that. I am new to this site.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:20:59 -0800

Hi, I am a commited Christian and find all this quite blasphemous. I thought you could be thrown off this site for this sort of talk. It really offends me. I thought I was focussing on the comments. No names were mentioned. I have only just joined, and was looking forward to some clean, interesting dialogue. Boy are you ever new around here. Wait until you see your first "Christianity is stupid! Give up! Give up!" thread.

By: Flashman

Flashman — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:23:11 -0800

Wow you can zoom right in and look at Jesus's enormous cock!

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:27:36 -0800

Well, that didn't take long.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:38:32 -0800

My god, you can totally zoom in and see that the painter thought it was all made-up nonsense about carpenters being God and so forth. Talking snakes! Talking snakes!

By: Malor

Malor — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:47:36 -0800

I'm on a big screen. The Flash interface is nice, but it's serving up 8.6 gigapixels onto about 1/6 of the total pixels I have to display them. As Flash interfaces go, that's an excellent one, but it's like peering through a porthole at the Titanic. :)

By: uncle harold

uncle harold — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:50:44 -0800

Talking snakes! Uh, planes weren't invented yet at the time this was painted.

By: peacay

peacay — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 05:22:51 -0800

Wow, that's fantastic thanks tellurian. it's like peering through a porthole at the Titanic Exactly. Lots of galleries and libraries use zoomify (more each day) and I both love and loathe it. It's great of course to get better closeups than just a 1Mb image might show but it's equally frustrating when I want to take away a decent sized version. Screencaps and splicing drive me a bit insane (yeah, I do it a lot). I suspect that's a big part of the reason repositories like that style of architecture so much. I'll have to give Autostitch a go.

By: milarepa

milarepa — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 05:49:01 -0800

if you zoom straight in, you go right into jesus' crotch.

By: pmbuko

pmbuko — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 05:56:22 -0800

Wait? What wait? Thank you 100mbit connection.

By: hal9k

hal9k — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:41:51 -0800

Tis' pixelrific! Why do I keep waiting for a Terry Gilliam animation to spring out?

By: three blind mice

three blind mice — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:59:38 -0800

but we have a saying around here: "Flag it and move on". Some Mefites have that saying. Some of us believe in freedom of stupid, offensive speech, ignore the shit we don't like, and move on.

By: tellurian

tellurian — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 07:17:42 -0800

My [slow loading] warning was based on my experience. It seems a lot of you have a much faster connection than me. (Jealous, me? No way, not 'alf. Ask me how much disgust I have for the Australian Government's approach to broadband.). peacay: zoomify... I both love and loathe it. I'm with you there.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 07:46:58 -0800

The best part of this site is the bit during the load when it tells you that you have to wait, on account of the affluence.

By: whoshotwho

whoshotwho — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 07:48:17 -0800

Wasn't there a post a few years back from a guy who had a 100 or 200 megapixel camera he made? He took a picture of some palace from afar (it may have been the Taj Mahal) and you could read the watch of some tourist a half-mile away.

By: Terminal Verbosity

Terminal Verbosity — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 08:09:17 -0800

Don't recall the post, whoshotwho, but this PopSci article from a while back details a guy taking 4 gigapixel landscape shots with a reconstituted spy satellite camera. It doesn't include any of the photos, unfortunately, that appeared in the print mag. Very cool, though.

By: Deathalicious

Deathalicious — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 08:19:12 -0800

I think Mumbly was offended by the term Jesus's bits. I shudder to think how Mumbly will react to the political posts...or the gay ones! Consider this a warning post, Mumbly. If you cannot handle this you probably will be offended by the front page posts (FPP), nevermind the comments! Your participation is more than welcome, but a thick skin and a slowness to react negatively is definitely needed.

By: Deathalicious

Deathalicious — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 08:21:53 -0800

Oh, and HEY. Did anyone notice the previous post?

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 08:38:06 -0800

Oh, I see. It's always all about the tech and the Jesus, huh. What about the art, man, the *art*?? ;) Seriously, it's by Gaudenzio Ferrari and can be viewed in a resolution limited only by the constraints of paint and the human eye at the Santa Maria della Grazie church in Varallo, Italy. Nice post.

By: twistedonion

twistedonion — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 08:39:10 -0800

I think Mumbly was offended by the term Jesus's bits. It's all clear now, and it is blasphemous - how dare anyone suggest that the good Lord would have bits!!! He may have been human but damn it, he was never rude!!!! Have a bit of decency man, I'm outraged now. Mumbly, want to start a holy war against Mefi? I'll join you.

By: SonicBoom

SonicBoom — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 08:40:05 -0800

Anybody familiar with this work? Gaudenzio Ferrari is the red headed bearded straight edge at the bottom of the crucifixion panel. But who is the Knight on the white horse, in the same panel, staring directly at the viewer?

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 08:42:23 -0800

Also: Delft, Netherlands as a gigapixel image by TNO (2004), also using Zoomify. (BBC)

By: Merlyn

Merlyn — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 09:40:36 -0800

I liked this. Is there a modern equivalent to these? Do people paint such huge, intricate works anymore?

By: found missing

found missing — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 09:57:12 -0800

Mumbly: I'm of the opinion that more Christians should be committed.

By: moira

moira — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 11:12:48 -0800

I'm curious: is anybody here aware of sites with large images of artwork that don't do the zoomify dealy?

By: quin

quin — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 11:16:27 -0800

lorbus : Interesting thing to note: if you zoom without moving anything you go straight to Jesus' bits. Because the designers of the site know that everyone wants to see the brushstrokes on Jesus' junk at 8.6gp. That said, I think this is a wonderful idea. I would love to see ultra high resolution photo work of all the old masters. It would allow us to get closer to them then we ever could in a museum.

By: Laotic

Laotic — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 12:15:00 -0800

Hey, why bash the music, it's some Jazzanova/Tosca/Dzihan&Kamien clip, that cannot be bad. (on preview 5 minutes later) Ok, now I see what you mean.

By: Laotic

Laotic — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 12:32:05 -0800

I did some pretty extensive search on the internet and I have discovered that this is, in fact, not the largest continuous zoomable graphical image. There is this great site called maps.google.com. It contains the picture of the whole earth, so I hear. I have not finished downloading it yet. It has a pretty slow connection. (No personal snarks, just joking : )

By: shoesandships

shoesandships — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:47:25 -0800

where's waldo?

By: Joe Invisible

Joe Invisible — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 19:37:12 -0800

Wasn't there a post a few years back from a guy who had a 100 or 200 megapixel camera he made? You may be thinking of gigapxl, the people who built a 1000-megapixel camera. It's a film camera, but with equivalent resolution. Stunning images, no stitching. Worth a look. These images of the Golden Gate bridge show off the camera's capabilities.