An iPIX User's Perspective
Many of us who use iPIX have never understood why users of other virtual image software hate iPIX so much. Many of those users are rejoicing in the demise of iPIX Corporation.
The Patent Itself
The anger was always centered on the patent of a 2 fisheye capture method. That iPIX was granted the patent isn’t in dispute, it was granted by the US Patent Office. Many think it should not have been granted, but of those who have posted opinions on the ‘Net, none that I’ve read said they were attorneys, let alone patent attorneys.
iPIX sued to protect their patent at least twice, Infinite Pictures and Live Pictures. I only recall they definitely won one suit for sure with an award of $4.3 million. I’m not sure which suit was won and what the result of the other was. My point is; the US Courts upheld the patent.
To a non-attorney like me, and other iPIX users, it seems to be a valid patent.
2 Fisheye Stitching: The Lenses
To be able to stitch a Full 360°x 360° Immersive Image from just 2 photos means the photos have to be Circular Fisheyes where there is a lot of black area around the circular image. At the time Omnivision, a predecessor of iPIX, filed the patent there was only one affordable lens (under $1,000) with a wide enough angle of view to stitch just 2 fisheye photos, the Nikon FC-E8. It has 183° angle of view both horizontal and vertical. The 3° is all there is to overlap and stitch with.
Later Nikon added the FC-E9 lens for some of the near-professional Coolpix cameras.
That I’m aware of, there is no other lenses with an angle of view over 180° that would make 2 fisheye stitching possible
So at the time of the patent, the whole fight was about what a single lens for Nikon’s Coolpix line of cameras could do.
2 Fisheye Stitching: The Patent
The patent only covered the stitching of 2 fisheyes, not 3 or 4 fisheyes. If a software developer really wants to sell a product that creates Full 360°x 360° Immersive Images without a Zenith & Nadir photos, why didn’t they just base it on 3 shots?
2 Fisheye Stitching: Quality
The only advantage of 2 Fisheye stitching is ease of shooting. The 2 fisheye capture is the simplest way to produce a fully immersive image (spherical or cubic). If this is the basis of the anger, having to shoot 3 or 4 fisheyes instead of 2, we don’t understand why VR photographers haven’t invested in a “one shot” system. Its not fully immersive, but it is a lot easier; wow just one shot. Yet there doesn’t seem to be a stampede to “one shot” systems?
I’ve been learning a lot about other camera/lens/rotator combinations from my membership with IVRPA. One thing is that all lenses have some “drop-off” at the extreme edge of the lens. The extreme edge is where 2 fisheye stitching is done in the 3° of overlap. Stitching 3 fisheyes, each with 183° angle of view, only uses the 120° center of the image where lens quality is almost always the best and sharpest. Simply, 3 fisheye produce better quality
Oddly, the versions of iPIX software that will stitch 3 fisheyes, doesn’t do a very good job at Zenith and Nadir.
So the demand for non-iPIX stitching of 2 fisheyes was a demand of average quality virtual images, not the superior quality produced by many QuickTime Cubic VR users I saw on IVRPA in its previous IQTVRA incarnation.
From some one who uses the iPIX Interactive Studio (their latest, greatest and last), the desire for 2 fisheye stitching is the desire for medium quality images. Part of this was also due to iPIX’s emphasis on lower resolution cameras. Quality does improve with the 8 megapixel Coolpix 8700, 8800 & 8400 cameras
And inexpensive program like PTGui does an awesome job of stitching 3 fisheyes for a real estate virtual tour photographer who isn’t going to take multiple shots of the same fisheye at different exposure setting for HDR compositing. 90% of real estate virtual tour photographers are ONLY going to take 3 photos for each room, period.
2 Fisheye Stitching: Other Software has been out there
RealViz just announced their Stitcher Unlimited DS (DS for Double Shot) like its something no one but iPIX had. PictoSphere/Minds Eye View has offered 2 fisheye stitching for a several years. Ford Oxaal, the founder of Minds Eye View, settled litigation with iPIX several years. Stitch-Fisheye.com has offered 2 fisheye stitcher for over a year that I know of. They have a cool Java Viewer that loads the subsequent images while you’re viewing the first one. And of course we all know that even when Helmut Dersch took PTStitcher off his website, its distribution never stopped. Others who had downloaded it took up the cause. The program was so small it could even be send as an e-mail attachment. And of course PTGui got its start as a GUI for PTStitcher
To an iPIX photographer, it only took about 10 minutes on Google to find a 2 fisheye stitching program other than iPIX.
So we never understood the fuss.
iPIX Stifled Competition
All iPIX stopped was a flood of bad software that could stitch 2 circular fisheyes.
The big flaw to this argument is if 2 fisheye stitching gave them such a big advantage, why are they bankrupt?
On the other hand they “sold” the idea of virtual imaging to the real estate and hotel industry. Nobody else was even close to being big enough to approach the National Association of Realtors, Hilton, Sheraton, Westin, Marriott and other potential users of virtual imaging. They created demand for virtual images and were able to refer work to their network of photographers
Why iPIX Dominated
Apple beat iPIX to the market with Quicktime VR Authoring software, but...
1. Apple NEVER offered a Windows version of the stitching software even though they did have the Quicktime Player for Windows. So only 5% of computer users could use the product. Pretty much they abandoned the entire Windows market for iPIX to go after.
And iPIX did.
2. Apple never offered a true Plug-In to view QTVR images. The Quicktime for Windows program took 30 minutes to download and install on a 56k modem back in the days before broadband. And it usually required Restarting the PC with earlier versions of Windows. By that time the web surfer forgot what they were going to look at. The iPIX Plug-In took about 30-60 seconds to download and install with no restart needed.
3. Apple never offered a Java Viewer, the iPIX Java Viewer had progressive image loading from version 3 on and version 5 supported hotspots.
4. The PTStitcher and PTViewer initially appealed mostly to individual photographers, not corporations, so adoption of the technology by the 2 main user industries, real estate and hotels, was slow. (The PTViewer is fast overtaking the iPIX Java Viewer as the dominate viewer on real estate and hotel websites)
5. After their stock offering iPIX was a big enough company, with a large sales force, to approach the National Association of Realtors (owners of Realtor.com), Sheraton, Westin, Hilton, Marriott and others directly. Basically there was a well financed “promoter” for the product that there never was for Quicktime and other VR products.
6. As well as the software, iPIX sold a multitude of cameras and rotators that worked with the FC-E8 and E9. Only a few re-sellers of QuickTime VR and other software offered limited camera, lens and rotator selections.
7. They had other products like the EGallery, iPIX Brochure, Hosting, iLinker for hotspots in the images to make even more use of the images. Basically they had a full line of VT tools from one company
Most of us iPIX users just never understood why so many virtual tour photographers hated the company so much, considering how much they did to really promote and expand the virtual imaging market
Re: Nice overview`
Aldo's covered two of the main reasons for 'iPix-hate', but to expand it out further:
The way they defended their patents:
There was a general perception that iPix pursued and harassed anyone working with fisheye remapping, not just those capable of two-shot set-ups. This was due to actions such as accusing Professor Dersch of stealing photos from the iPix website: http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/1999/09/20/story1.html?pa... and their continued pursuit of him after he had built a 160 degree limit into PanoTools.
A third point - the validity of the '667' patent:
When iPix submitted the same patent in Europe it was rejected (twice) on the grounds that it wasn't innovative enough to be granted, reinforcing beliefs that it should never have been granted in the US. The situation was widely seen in Europe as a US corporation going on the rampage with a patent covering basic mathematical concepts. A large proportion of the panoramic community still see it as a demonstration of all that was/is wrong with the US patent system, while the court cases upholding the patent were seen as further proof of this. :-(
This ties back into Aldo's point about the pay-per-use licensing - apart from people generally disliking the concept, it was seen as a further insult - "we have to pay each time we use remapping algorithms out of a textbook?".
On a technical note, I believe at least one of the Coastal Optics fisheyes was available at the time.
Ian
P.S. None of this is intended argumentatively, just trying to answer why iPix were often seen as 'the bad guys'. ;-)
Coastal optics
So, when was the last time you saw a Coastal Optics fisheye lens? I for one never saw one ;-)
Talking about smileys, and nice overviews, there's a thorough overview of fisheye lenses by Luca Vascon.
Re: Coastal optics
Oh, I've never actually seen one. Luca has, of course!
Re: Coastal optics
They are used quite a lot in the Real Estate buisness. I have a friend here in my litttle village (1000 people) who has 2 of them.
And he is absolutelly not an IPIX user.
Hans
Re: Coastal optics
Ian
Coastal Optics still makes a 185° FOV fisheye for digital SLR cameras
Its $4,495.00
Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM
Re: Nice overview`
Ian
I think there might have been other greater than 180° angle of view lenses at the time, but the cost was prohibitive to the average VT photographer. That was why I mentioned "under $1000"
iPIX had some produced in Japan to work with specific cameras, but they were $3000. There is info about them still on their website.
Without the affordable FC-E8 and FC-E9, the ranksr of VT photographers would be a lot smaller. I know I wouldn't be doing it.
Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM
Re: Nice overview`
The "keys" system was a mixed blessing;
1. The software was relatively inexpensive with iPIX getting additional income as users produced images. The iPIX Real Estate Wizard was FREE for a long time, now its only $25 or $35 dollars. The keys for the Real Estate Wizard (there were different types of keys) included hosting and distribution to multiple websites. Distribution is now $25 per home. The iPIX Builder (their product for producing the best quality was only $195 with keys originally being $50, later dropping to $25. Volume users could buy 100 keys for $1000 ($10 each). In the early days of virtual tours $300 a scene wasn't uncommon so a $25 - $50 image cost wasn't that bad. It not unlike HP & Epson selling printers at little or no profit and making their money on expensive print cartridges
2. The iPIX Interactive Studio dropped the "key" model with annual licences. I can produce unlimited images for a year.
3. As a businessman I saw "keys" as a way for iPIX to maintain an income flow. This gave them ongoing money to work with to continually improve their products. IIS was release in 2003 or 2004 and had 4 upgrades (last ver. was 1.42) before the bankruptcy. The iPIX Java Viewer was up to ver. 5 with the addition of hotspot support.
The threatened lawsuit against Dersch did seem to be the tipping point for bad public relations among VT photographers.
But I always found their motives a bit suspect; was it really an issue of "principle" about whether the patents were legitimate or the desire for free software? I suspect many that continued to distribute PanoTools after Dersch removed it from his web page would be quick to cry foul if some one violated their copyright by using an image without permission. It seems they only respected the patent/copyright laws when it benefited them.
I still question what "developement" was stifled? There are numerous "stitchers" represented among the IVRPA membership and more not represented like "Stitch Fisheye" from Thailand. Let's see, QuickTime VR, VR Worx, EasyPano, RealViz Stitcher, PTGui, PanoTools, and more on the links page. Just how many products can a small industry like virtual tour photography support?
I think you may be right about the lenses. Its seems odd to me that Nikon produced fisheyes for a semi-professional line like Cooplix at all and that the 2 lenses had a field of view just over 180°. Exactly what was needed for 2 fisheye stitching. I suspect Nikon made them with iPIX or 2 fisheye stitching specifically in mind.
Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM
Stifling innovation
You're sort of making my point. You are pointing out several other stitchers, but they all used the same techniques; What innovation in stitching have you seen between the era Quicktime VR AS and very recent developments like autopano and enblend? Other than the iPix system where automated blending was used over actual stitching, I see no innovation until very recently. By publically enforcing their patent, iPix scared more than one (potentially innovative) company away from our industry.
In the field of viewing panoramas we see the same. With iPix squashing Smoothmove, it would have been a very gutsy move by and commercially run business to get in the same water as iPix. The reason why small one man outfits, like my fieldOfView, or the opensource community could start innovating again is that if iPix were to come after us (rightfully or not) it would be just our time and energy, but not a bug company 'exploding'.
Re: Stifling innovation
Aldo
Your knowledge in this area is far beyond mine, but for the sake of discussion...
If Smoothmove had a true innovation (definition: a new idea, method, or device), how is it they were infringing on iPIX's "old" patent.
iPIX doesn't seem to have bothered Field of View, PTGui or RealViz. I assume its simply because there's no infringement of their patent.
RealViz actually worked with iPIX on a RealViz plug-in for the iPIX Interactive Studio. There was also a plug-in for iSeeMedia's PhotoVista.
Obviously there were virtual imaging companies iPIX didn't sue or intimidate out of the business.
Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM
Re: Stifling innovation
Aldo
What you seem to be saying without actually saying it, is with iPIX enforcing its 2 fisheye patent, that the innovation can't go forward.
I just find it hard to believe.
Won't any of these innovations won't work with 3 fisheyes?
If that's so, iPIX's patent is very valuable and does give them an overwhelming advantage.
Except they went bankrupt.
Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM
Re: Stifling innovation
What happened was that - intentionally or not - companies and individual alike were scared away from doing anything innovative in the field of panoramic imaging, because of the fear that one day a letter from the iPix legal department would show up. Even if the legal letter would have little merrit, a small company would not have the resources to succesfuly defend itself.
If you're a medium-large company considering to go make products for a niche marker (which panoramic imaging is), do you think the prospect of possible litigation works favorable in the decission to pursue that direction?
Re: Stifling innovation
Aldo
I think any company, medium or small, that might have an idea for a panoramic imaging product, would do some research to discover the nature of the lawsuits before backing off.
Any company that is scared away from creating a product they have the expertise to produce by news stories that don't go into the fine points of the patent and rumors and rantings on the Internet doesn't have a lot going for it in the first place. I doubt I'd invest in some one that timid. Like I have the money to invest ;)
I have an idea for using scans of my collection of old, linen finish postcards in a booklet showing the history of Albuquerque. I've done some research about the old US Copyright Laws (pior to 1978) which would apply to them and it looks good. But I also plan to spend a couple hundred dollars with a Intellectual Property Attorney to get their opintion. I'm a company of just one person.
If they can't afford a thousand dollars of legal advice on the front end, where are they going to get the cash to copyright/patent the innovation they're going to create?
I've had this conversation in Forums/Groups before and no one ever comes up with the name of a company or individual who decided not to create a product in fear of iPIX's legal department. They all spoke in generalities and broad assumptions.
Your Spi-V product contradicts your own position. I assume Field of View is a small organization and you haven't mentioned iPIX's lawyers driving you into bankruptcy.
PTGui recently intoduced their own stitcher (intead of using the PTStitcher) in 2005 with ver.5 and didn't run afoul of iPIX becasue it requires 4 fisheyes. The RealViz Sticher Unlimited used 3 or 4 fisheyes before their new Double-Shot version. Both are smaller companies than iPIX and all they had to do is not infringe on the 2 fisheye patent. RealViz actually had a business relationship with iPIX in the form of a RealViz plug-in iPIX offered that gave the iPIX Interactive Studio the ability to stitch 4 and 5 fisheyes from the Sigma 8mm. Without the plug-in the IIS could only stitch 2 or 3 circular fisheyes
IMHO the reason iPIX went after Live Pictures, Infinite Pictures and others so aggresively was iPIX invested in a full line of camera&lens specific rotators, spent thousands developing markets like real estate and the hotel industry and set up the hosting & distribution system. iPIX's critics seem to forget they were the only panoramic imaging company that offered a top to bottom, beginning to end set of products and services. They even had iPIX University to train photographers how to produce virtual images.
Live & Infinite just wrote software that could use the images from an iPIX camera setup. In other words iPIX spent millions of dollars while Live & Infinite, spending a fraction of that, tried to steal iPIX's customers with a "no keys to buy" pitch and did it by infringing on their patent. That would really piss me off too
I think the biggest reason there's not much innovation in panoramic imaging is it is such a small "nitch market" as you said, and there's just not that much interest in it. Plus the profit potential just isn't there, after all the biggest player in the nitch just went bankrupt.
Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM
Re: An iPIX User's Perspective
I can give you answers to much of what you asking; why do people hate iPIX so much?
I think most of the problem was with the way iPIX went about enforcing the patent and not as much about the patent itself. Patent's are always going to be disputed by people who feel they have a better mouse trap, especially with a lot of process patents being issued these days. This is behind-the-scenes stuff that is standard procedure & posturing. But this story took on a life of its own with the classic "David vs. Golith" angle, ie; the big bad corporation vs. the small developer/photographer.
iPIX did not help the situation by getting all uptight and having too much $$$$$ and many attorneys on staff. As they say, attorneys can make a mountain out of a molehill real quick. iPIX had a patent that they used to get money from investors and had a responsibility to their investors/shareholders to protect the patent.
iPIX did not have a problem with Helmut so much as with the people that used his software. His software allowed people to use the iPIX key to swap their images with the images that paid for the bubble/key. Helmut was not violating the patent, his users were violating the copyrights of the iPIX users, and in turn the patent.
These patent issues are always going to pop-up all the time, thats just the way it is in this type of business. What iPIX did to fan the flames is what really got the bee hive humming; unethical sales tactics and a CEO that had a "no-prisoners" attitude. Jim Baker' mission was to take the company public in 2.5 yrs. That was his focus and he mowed-over anyone that got in the way.
Most of what everyone heard was based mostly on rumor and embellished many times over to give it legs. True, there were several incidents of over-aggressive iPIX sales reps doing dasterdley deeds. But hey... what can you expect from former real-estate sales people that couldn't make it in an over-heated market and wound up at iPIX selling tours.
Its to bad that they couldn't make it in the longrun and they DID help make VR something a lot more people know about today than if they never exsisted. They just found the right price point for the real estate and tourism markets after battling Bamboo for market share by cutting the price down to $99 from $200. Unfortunately, it turned these markets into a commodity where quality did not matter. I tried the iPIX model as a test in a suburban market with an area about 150 miles radius. There is no way you could make money in this kind of market. The model vs reality were not even close unless you had a radius of about 10 miles and 2-3 yrs to develop. Then you might see a modest profit. That was the reality :-(
The original idea for the IQTVRA was to pool our resources ($$$$$) to create an independent network of VR developers around the world that would promote and market VR. By pooling our resources as a group, we have a better chance of succeeding than as individuals. iPIX was able to do that better because they were better funded and organized.
I hope this explains the bad-blood some feel towards iPIX. As far as where I stand on them, I'm sorry to see them go, there were some very good people at iPIX doing good things. Unfortunately, some people have a hard time burying the axe. Their last app, The Studio, was a good app that showed promise. We'll have to see where Sony goes with the patent.
BTW; I have a feeling that Ford is probably the only one to see any financial benefit from Sony buying the patent, they will have to pay him for licensing just like iPIX did. Just that they have deeper pockets!
Loren
Re: An iPIX User's Perspective
Loren & Aldo & Ian
I just wanted to say its been great having a discussion about iPIX without someone foaming at the mouth in anger against iPIX.
I have to admit that when I read the patent my reaction was "you can get a patent for that?"
And I've often thought of iPIX as the Microsoft or IBM of the virtual imaging industry. They weren't angels by any means, but to advance a business segment, one company/product often has to dominate. Does anybody remember the days when every computer manufacturer had their own proprietary DOS? Apple, IBM, Tandy/Radio Shack, Altair. Without Windows, the desktop market would have never grown like it has.
Virtual Imaging is still a very small nitch market. Consider how small it would be without a "big" (relatively speaking) company like them to crack Realtor.com, the Cendant family of real estate companies (Coldwell Banker, Century 21, ERA), Sheraton hotels, Hilton, Marriott. Who else had the resources, desire and credibility to open these markets?
Actually it wasn't iPIX that "set" the $99 real estate tour price. Their original model was as provider of software and hosting to agents and independent photographers. Bamboo.com had the $99 tour and iPIX merged with them. That's how iPIX ended up with 2 corporate HQs, Oak Ridge, TN and San Ramon, CA.
Their "point & shoot" approach, made possible by 2 fisheye stitching, to virtual imaging did discourage quality and kept prices low. And the real estate prices underminded non-real estate prices.
But I think a lot of that is our own fault. We tend to do what most people do, look only at price and not value and quality. We let ourselves be defeated by a lower priced VT photographer without a fight. Basically we're good photographers, but poor sales people. What I'm finding is if I can demonstrate better quality in a way that Realtors and other customers can appreciate, I can get a higher price.
What's working is "Super-Size" images. Don't laugh, but I'm talking about 640x480 display size. I had no problem selling a restaurant/event center, custom homebuilder/interior decorator and a downtown loft project on $100 an image for 4 or more ($125 each for 3 or less)
Real estate agents and most of the public that have seen a VT are used to 320x240 images so this is a big jump. Getting the virtual images clear and sharp enough with a 5 megapixel camera and circular fisheyes to display this size has taken some work. I'm hoping the 8 megapixel Coolpix 8700 I just bought will get me up to 800x600 with a 1 megapixel file.
I still trade e-mails with iPIX's old Sales Manager of "still imaging" and he said that iPIX was taking the fist steps to emphasize better quality imaging. He said their plan was to build their next generation system around the Sigma 8mm, Peace River rotator and RealViz plug-in. They had to becasue they were seeing the Coolpix line of cameras move "down-market" from the semi-professional 8700/8400/8800 models and assumed Nikon would soon stop making the FC-E8 & FC-E9 lens.
Too bad we'll never see how much Virtual Imaging would have grown with a quality oriented advocate as big as iPIX.
Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM
Nice overview`
That's a nice overview of the 'other side'.
IMHO, iPix 'gained unpopularity' because of two factors:
A necessary evil; even if iPix arguably did not do all the research for the patent on their own, a patent costs money. If you don't defend a patent, it looses its value. Unfortunately, this practice really stifled development in the industry. Not only in the 'stitching industry', but in the whole panoramic imaging industry. It was just too risky to be innovative in this industry, after what had happened to Smoothmove and Live Picture. Harassing a sole developer of open source tools which only partially infringed on the patent but which was used in a much wider context was not a smart move, especially because that developer had a 'hero status' in a rather large community of photographers.
The only other software that was out there doing (exactly) what iPix did (2 shot fisheyes) could only exist because it was by a chinese company, and the chinese have a different view on patents (or ip). The other solutions, most notably Stitcher DS, only appeared as iPix was rapidly sliding towards bankruptcy.
Personally I actually like the pay-per-use system, but it is not what people want (*). The quality/price ratio was also beginning to drop in comparison to other solutions. The pay-per-year scheme was too little, too late to change the reputation of iPix.
However, without iPix we would probably not have as many fisheye lenses as we do now. The Coolpix fisheyes would have been a lot more expensive and rare, and we'ld probably be stuck with either Peleng or Nikkor 8mm lenses. The attention the realestate market has for panoramic imaging is a bit of a mixed blessing though; I can't help but feeling that iPix is partly to blame for the extremely low prices of 'virtual tours' for real estate.
*: believe me, I know ;-)