This screenshot comes from the new version of the Zune software soon to be released. For a “now playing” visualizer, it displays a wall of all the album art in your music collection with the current album enlarged over the wall. Minimalistic controls are overlayed at the bottom. It reminds me of a room filled with music posters. Very cool indeed.
MetroTwit
What an expansive view
I can hear lot of apple fanboys screaming in anger :p
Looks like more of an album browser than a visualizer. Say if you mouse over an album, the album art zooms in with album info, etc. But maybe I am wrong…
They should integrate some Photosynth stuff into it. Can you imagine having every album’s cover available in one giant montage and being able to zoom into each one for hi-res detail, but also able to flit about in a wide view with hundreds of albums visible? Plus, you could click on tags or run search and they would dynamically reorient themselves so that the relevent albums would be up front and center? Anyone know what I’m talking about?
im quite suprised that we havent seen the zune 2 software leak, my zune30 is begging for the firmware lol
as for the new visualisation its quite nice of a concept
I wonder if the new zune software offers higher resolution album art than the 200×200 they are currently offering, that gets stretched out to 240×240 or higher on the zune.
Every day that passes, I get more of an urge to buy one
Damn consumerism!
@Mike
Yes. It’s 800×800 and has been steadily replacing much of the previous, lower resolution album artwork on the Zune Marketplace.
Neat – tile option.
Kind of similar to browsing stuff on Windows Media Center.
I wish Microsoft would work on a more “album art carousel” layout. Kind of like CoverFlow, but displays much more info, more better.
I’m quite thankful that Zune really cared about album art, before iPod did.
@RC
I’m hearing you brother,
haha, I was thinking the same thing myself.
Sea Dragon is the technology that allows the zooming in and displaying of 1000+ images with ease. Photosynth uses Sea Dragon, and then calculates the position of each imagine in a 3d space.
So, I would love to see Microsoft start using Sea Dragon in a lot of their products e.g. Windows Media Player, Media Center as a 3d view in the next version of Explorer (Along with Phodeo), and as Photosynth in Photo Gallery.
Fairly awesome.
Long, you have any ideas for acquiring a Zune2 if one lives in Australia? I know MWave sold the first ones but I’m not sure when they’ll be getting the new ones in (I sent them an email asking though).
Also, to expand upon the problem there’s the whole Zune Originals thing which would be even harder to acquire. :/
yeah so, i tried to find this vis and failed. Any idea how to get to it? I’ll try again when I get home from work.
Whoa, thanks! Greatest thing is that it functions perfectly without Zune as the coolest music player I currently have on my PC!:)
Mike: it’s hidden a little bit: start playing song, then click the pink ‘equalizer’ icon in bottom right corner and there you go.
Since this is the kind of thing that you like to know, it might interest you to know that Zune v2 is completely re-written from the ground up using the same technology that Media Center is built with, which is why you get the same kind of animation and visuals that you find with WMC.
Looks like apples core image technology presentation that was posted on site, months ago.
I think im getting a Zune this weekend
and btw it looks like Media Center -> Browse Library… which has been around since Longhorn
This guys music stinks… except for Andrew Bird… thats pretty cool