EveryScape transitions?

[Mixed]

Hi there,

Have a look at EveryScape website:
http://www.everyscape.com/

Interesting, huh? ;)
Well... digging into it, I found out that the transitions between the panoramas are in fact pre-rendered FLV movies.
I was wondering if anyone has an ideea on how to make transitions like this.

Or maybe Denis can think of a way to make transitions like that in the realtime? ;)

[birdseye]

Just found this website... the transition is very cool !

[jaaaab]

don't you think we got to capture those transitions ourselves?

i don't think it's possible to render transitions like that without filming from point to point...

++

[Scott Witte]

You can also see this done quite effectively by Immersivision (http://www.immersivision.com/).

The technique involves shooting a series of still images while physically moving from one point to another, then combining those into the video sequence. The closest you can come otherwise is a zoom movement proceeding the loadPano, which I've experimented with. It is a lesser but less demanding substitute.

So, there is a lot more production involved which will cost the client more. It will also significantly increase the bandwidth requirements, load times and client hardware demands. I believe you will find the transition FLVs are as large as the panos they connect. Imagine if this was being done with fullscreen panos. That said, the effect is impressive, effective and a step closer to "being there". For the right clients it could be money well spent. I certainly plan to explore it soon.

[eulariza]

Hey guys! Have you already checked on MapJack (http://www.mapjack.com) too? It's a very cool website that I just stumbled upon. Looks like San Francisco is their starting point among all cities. I am checking if there are still any other cities the website is covering. It would really be nice to take a virtual tour of places I probably can't visit in person. I am so glad that we already have this kind of technology at present.

[birdseye]

I just found this tutorial

http://www.creativemac.com/2003/11_nov/tutorials/superzoom.htm

to create such an effect in After Effects.

And this Flash version is also not bad... http://toolfarm.com/tutorials/superzoom.html

But the question now is how to put this effect in your panorama...

Yvan.

[WideEyes]

I know that Easypano is working on something similar with their Panowalker. See a demo here: http://www.easypano.com/Gallery/walker/walker_demo/walker.html

Best regards
Morten

[Scott Witte]

I know that Easypano is working on something similar with their Panowalker.
Interesting. By description it sounds similar to what the production company for Ikea's dream kitchen is talking about for next year, although I expect there would be fewer 360 nodes and many more frames between nodes. You can get an idea of the production time involved by watching the sun spots on the kitchen cabinet move with each step -- not that it should have to take that long.

But what I really want to know is, why would someone lock a kitchen???

[virtual walker]

www.vectrys.com a real virtual tour, no stiching, no fisheye, but real tours !

[Scott Witte]

www.vectrys.com a real virtual tour, no stiching, no fisheye, but real tours !

Interesting. Thanks for sharing the link. Unfortunately the English version of the site didn't seem to work but I was able to work out that this system has more in common with object movies than immersive VR. It is constructed with a series of still photos, including the 360s, which is why there is no stitching. This is less efficient than a real VR at the nodes taking 6 times the amount of data of a real VR at the same resolution and coverage. As a result it takes far greater bandwidth and probably a better computer to get the same quality level in Vectrys compared to regular VR. That may be why the quality of the demos is wanting, IMO. It is why panning motion is anything but smooth. Also, they are using an uncorrected fisheye to shoot each image which results in the barrel distortion at the sides. I don't like it although it may not bother some.

The "advantage" is that there is no transition or quality difference while moving from node to node. You also get a more convincing 3D space impression while moving. That is strictly the result of more images per distance than the other examples we've seen.

This does a nice job of illustrating the concept but personally I want far better quality and a more immersive (closer to 360x180) experience at the nodes.

[borderline]

I have to say the best presentation that I have yet to see is neustep. http://www.neustep.com.

Their walk thrus run really smooth! Much better than any of the others listed.

I have seen the vectrys before, but there stuff takes way too long to load. All I am able to see is "buffering"... I believe they were called something else before. I thought they were an israli company??

Scott, if your interested in seeing more VR at the nodes then see Neustep. It is very much what you are talking about.

-Nolan

[Scott Witte]

And here is another: MotionVR (http://www.motion-vr.com/). The quality level is better than what nuestep shows but the technique is essentially the same.

Through these various examples and methods it is obvious a number of companies are exploring various methods to convey a more realistic "you are there" tour experience. There are obvious tradeoffs between quality, image size, file size, download time etc. I wonder what is really the most effective for the end user?

Personally, in principle I want something like MotionVR or easypano. It is about as close as you are going to get to a 3D VR tour short of creating a real 3D (game-like or RealViz VTour) environment. But as I do the tour I'm not sure I gain enough from their technique to justify the overhead. As any pro knows each room really has only a few, say one to three viewpoints that convey the "message" of that room. Expanding that to 50 or more nodes mostly becomes redundant while greatly expanding the overhead of the tour making large, full screen nodes entirely impractical.

To me it seems the big advantage of these transitions is to convey the spacial relationship between nodes, so you don't loose your bearings when moving from one to the next. I think that is done effectively enough with something like what Immersivision does. On balance I would prefer beautiful full screen nodes connected by a series of motion tweened stills. As I have time I think that is where my efforts will go.

Trade-offs. A real holodeck experience is some years away.

[Tuddi]

Both are interesting, I would also go for the MotionVR if I had to choose. But... this is an insane amount of work to be put into a single walkthrough.

What I have been hoping for (mainly for object photography) is for someone to make a rendering program that will build up a digitally simulated model of what last image looked like, and what next image looks like, and in the end create a rotating object that is fully smooth in it's movements. Same technique could of course be applied to panos, and as such it could make a virtual tour in a room very smooth and complete by using only a few panos in order to get a triangulation to everything in the room. So most of the virtual walkthrough would be a computer graphics emulation of the real environment (hopefully I managed to explain what I meant).

[cheathamlane]

Hey Tuddi:

Isn't that called "video"?

:-P

Have you seen REALVIZ's VTour? It may be similar to what you describe for Panoramas/scenes (versus objects).

http://imagemodeler.realviz.com/products/VT/index.php?language=EN

[Tuddi]

Hey Tuddi:

Isn't that called "video"?

:-P

Well, yes, but what I want, is an interactive video, where you can rotate the object in question in every way you want it, and smoothly as if there were no picture frames missing from any angle. That's not doable right now, but will surely come in the next couple of years or so.

Have you seen REALVIZ's VTour? It may be similar to what you describe for Panoramas/scenes (versus objects).

http://imagemodeler.realviz.com/products/VT/index.php?language=EN

Yes, I am familiar with imagemodeler (I have version 4.0.2) ... the problem is that it is still very very basic, and doesn't (yet) provide enough quality in the output, plus the files generated are best suited for CD/DVD presentations, not online viewing, due to the output size of the files (if you want it in a relatively good quality).

The concept is ok, but it needs more work before it can be expected to be embrazed by the outside world... Regarding the price, first of all: They haven't updated the price list for a couple of years at least. The exchange between Euro and Dollar is at 1,17 on their site, while it is 1,48 in today's markets. So their dollar price of 880 is actually 1110 today... so if anyone wants to buy it, do it in dollars, rather than in euros or pounds... it will save you the 20% the dollar has fallen since they made their prices. No significant improvements have been made to the program in the past couple of years or so (since I got it) ... and I don't expect it to move out of it's stale mode any time soon. If I am wrong on that account, I wouldn't be surprised... I am not very good at predicting the future :rolleyes:

[cheathamlane]

I'm right with about VTour.

Have you not seen what's going on at the Microsoft Research Labs? I saw a demo by them a the VR Summit in Savannah a couple years ago -- They have done exactly that; that is, 360° video, interactive at any angle or "depth" of the walkthrough. I'll see if I can dig up a link to the video of the conference. That's not products though.

Smoother Object VR would be nice -- but then, I don't think it'd be photographic. Notice at Apple's Web site, how many of their product VR is now 3D modeling and not photography (iPhone for instance).

[borderline]

I am have to disagree. While motionVR has more options for navigation. Too me its overkill. Also, their transitions seem like pauses from each node. neuStep does not have that problem the transitions seem seamless. MotionVR seems to have a very weird distortion of its own as well. Its not even paralax or anything like that. I dont know what to call it.

Microsoft is working on the project called photosynth that is pretty cool. It is basically a logic engine that stitches all of the images on the web into real scenes by using a control point logic that hands out fingerprint type matches to images. Very neat! I dont know how practical. It seems like it would take years and years to generate enough content to make it useful.

The RealVIZ software is pretty cool. Basically all you are doing is taking a panoramic scene and mapping it to a 3D model. I did one of those not too long ago and used Aldo's SPV viewer. The modeling time and the texturing time does not make a whole lot of sense for the presentation. It takes way too long for the presentation that you get from it, and you have to remember that your still confined to one scene. If you move to a different room then thats another scene. From the research that I have done neustep claims that their 70ft scenes take about 15 minutes to complete.

Fun stuff to think about.

-Nolan

[Tuddi]

Photosynth... wow! That's crazy.

Re. neustep...
Do you know what kind of equipment and software solution they use for their virtual tours?

[Scott Witte]

Re. neustep...
Do you know what kind of equipment and software solution they use for their virtual tours?

Looks like a single shot pano cam such as the Kaiden 360 OneVR (ie. Lower quality compared to what everyone is doing here.) These are tied together in a series of linked panos. We have seen variations on this, at least experimentally for a fair number of years. Check out Bill Meikle's VRHotwires, for instance.

There are examples like Paul Iliffe's cool www.worldinmotionvr.com (http://www.worldinmotionvr.com). The intent was different but the technique is essentially the same.

[Tuddi]

If it is the Kaidan (or other similar one shot mirror system), it wouldn't explain the zenith. No doubt the shots are single shots, I just wonder about the top portion.

[Scott Witte]

If it is the Kaidan (or other similar one shot mirror system), it wouldn't explain the zenith

Confusing. Except for the nuestep residential real estate (which I hadn't seen) none of the examples had a zenith. (Photo realistic rendering doesn't count assuming it is all computer generated.) In fact the way you could see the edge of the hole when tilting up suggested the one shot.

For the residential example they may be using a two shot (eg. ipix) approach. But hey. I don't really know and I didn't see anything specific on their website.

[borderline]

Yeah I saw that too. Just out of curiosity i called neustep to get a little more info as to what they are doing and how they offer their service. Now I asked about some having zenith and others not. And from what I was able to gather they have a consumer ready fully spherical lens attachment that they will be selling near mid january 2008. I asked about how they are able to do it and they didnt give me too much information, but they did say that NeuStep is now fully spherical using a high quality slr camera, their lens attachment, and and their software. Of course the next question was price, but I was shocked to learn that they have a rental program and their lens is estimated to sell for around $1300. I guess you get a free software application for undisclosed supported camera models which are currently pending manufacture partnerships.

He (Chris at neustep) also said they they have another progression up their sleeve that will blow the community away, but I dont know how much more realistic you can get on an lcd screen! :-P

Interesting stuff and definitely nice guys! I am on their mailing list now so I will definitely keep up to speed with them... And hopefully I can get my paws on some of their equipment.

Nolan

[Tuddi]

... and you are more than welcome to keep us updated when you get updated....

Fully spherical lens for one shot.... that sounds interesting. Hollow support pin with a secondary mirror system above the first one could be possible... ?

But that would be a mirror system, not a lens system...

[borderline]

Tuddi...

Yes I specifically asked and they said lens... All optics, no mirrors. Is that even possible?

-Nolan

[Tuddi]

Thinking out of the box allows one to do the "impossible".

So yes, I am sure it is possible, even though I have not stretched my brain beyond the boundaries of my own little pano-box.

Yes, come to think of it, it is absolutely possible.

Imagine the lens glass itself going BEYOND it's traditional borders. With the glass part going extending the sides of the metal casing, it could be "mirrorized" partly on the edges, so that it could see behind the camera and complete the sphere. Only thing needed after that, would be the software to handle the image taken.

At least that would be my take on it.

[borderline]

Yeah I will definitely be looking forward to them revealing it. Just think what that could do for the community. NO MORE STITCHING!

Whoo Hoo! :-P

-Nolan

[slyping]

hey look this POST (http://www.flashpanoramas.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6846)