Microsoft Research - What does it research? World Wide Telescope!
Microsoft Research has been around for 17 years, it started in 1991. I remember reading about it before I came to Microsoft; I was, and continue to be, amazed at how much money Microsoft invests into research every year. Of course, every year we increase our research budgets, increase our research teams, and even increase the number of research facilities. This year, we will open our 6th research facility! Microsoft Research New England opens in July 20008. It's so great to see some of the innovations that come out of Microsoft Research. Looking at some of the things we now take for granted. Things like: Tablet PCs, the Junk Mail Filters, Multiple Monitor support. Speech Server and the enhanced Speech tools that were included in Windows XP and Windows Vista, and now are part of our new Response Point solutions. Speaking of our newer innovations, Application Compatibility Toolkit, OneNote, and RoundTable, are some of the newer solutions that Microsoft Research has provided to the marketplace.
Check out the MS Research site, and it will give you a lot of insight into the some of the other contributions Microsoft Research has made into not only our products, but the ecosystem as a whole. One of the latest innovations out of Microsoft Research is the World Wide Telescope. While the telescope is an incredible technological contribution to the community, it is really cool that it was built with one of our new tools, the the Microsoft® high performance Visual Experience Engine™. It does install an application onto your machine, like Virtual Earth, but this way it gives you better control over the image management and resolution.
Please check out the following URL for details on the project:
http://research.microsoft.com/news/featurestories/publish/WorldWideTelescope.aspx?0hp=n1
Or it has its own external URL:
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/
Get started with the Guided Tours, it will show you some of the things the telescope has in store for you. The many worlds tour rocks! Check out the detail... OK, you won't see the dust on the planets, but when you think about the fact that these are the images created by some of greatest telescopes, this is pretty awesome stuff. Just think about the number of pictures that were taken and stitched together to make these 3-D pictures. You can even connect to and control your own telescope!
I hope you see the cool with the telescope project, but I hope you also see the value this type of technology can provide to our day to day business needs. This type of technology is already being used for 3-D renderings, but the enhanced detail, and the development tools to make this type of functionality available to normal developers. These tools will enable developers to build these types of applications without having to have the specialized skills in graphics development.
I hope you enjoy the telescope and I'd love to hear about some of the great things you uncover with it!
Until next time!
Rob