In its ongoing effort to support the iOS platform with a steady flow of new releases and updates, Microsoft released earlier today a new app for iPhone called Photosynth which is aimed at letting you create panoramic, 360-degree photos with your device’s camera. The concept and overall execution are very similar to Occipital’s 360 Panorama for iPhone: you hold your iPhone, and rotate it to capture what’s around you. The app will then “stitch” the panorama to offer a zoomable image that you can pan with your fingers to see the complete result. Unlike Occipital’s software, Microsoft’s application comes with sound effects for each photo (in fact, Photosynth does nothing but capturing a series of photos and making a collage after processing them) and simpler on-screen guides. I’ve used the app for a couple of hours now and, lack of gyroscope aside, it seems to me that Occipital’s app still produces better panoramas both in direct sunlight and low-light conditions. There’s some serious overlapping of photos in Photosynth, and the underlying processing algorithm doesn’t look very smart to me.

However, if you’re a fan of Microsoft’s new Metro style, the Photosynth app will please you with Windows Phone 7-like menus and buttons. The animations are quite nice, but not exactly “iOS native.” Photosynth also comes with several sharing functionalities: you can send panoramas to the Photosynth.net service (requires a Windows Live ID login), Facebook and even Bing Maps. Microsoft actually encourages you to share through Bing Maps, as “millions of people could see your panoramas on maps and in search results for locations you’ve captured.”

Photosynth is an interesting experiment, and I look forward to future updates. Get the app here.