The VR Photography Revolution

The VR Photography Revolution

Written by:

Daniel M. Paez

Media Studies 100
Media Technologies

Professor Kelly Gates
Spring 2007

The VR Photography Revolution

Our perception of the world has been changing throughout the history based upon the social and cultural contributions of the technological developments. Photography in its early stage offered us the opportunity to record time and memories in a picture, a graphical representation of our surroundings, or ourselves. As the photography technology evolved, we were able to make many effects on the pictures that we took with the camera at the dark room. The digital photography arrived and with its new capabilities were the digital software that can stitch together many pictures to conform a panorama. These new capabilities offered us a new perspective of our environment because now we are able to see the whole 360° of a specific location, or object, not only the limited square frame from the past; the VR Photography Revolution have started and each day new applications, of these innovative technology, are emerging.

In order to continue our approach on this media innovation, let us answer the following question: What is VR Photography? “A VR Photo, sometimes called Virtual Reality or Immersive Photography, is a digital panoramic image which allows you an interactive 360 degree horizontal and vertical view around any scene” (http://www.3dfxdesign.com/Pano.html). The concept of being located as an observer in the center of a spherical view of any environment, it’s in essence very revolutionary. Many businesses and industries nowadays are using the advantages that these media innovation can offer us; it is being used as an impressive marketing tool for the development of Web-Virtual Tours, multimedia presentations to be used at Open Houses, Conferences, Conventions, and Digital Catalogs/Portfolios.

The VR Photography acting as an impressive marketing tool “allows your client remote access to your real estate portfolio. Your client can “immerse” themselves within the scene, obtaining a greater understanding of the surrounding site context, and visualize space and perspectives unobtainable in a standard digital photograph” (http://www.3dfxdesign.com/Pano.html). The fact that in the real estate industry the prospective clients doesn’t need to mobilize from the place where they have access to the Internet which can be at home, in order to view and compare different kinds of properties, it is changing the buyers’ culture and transforming the realtor professional role. Now the buyers can look around many places, compare them, and better understand the surroundings before committing a financial transaction. The applications of this technology not only rely on the real estate industry, they can be classified under a huge range usages from Virtual Campus Tours, Tourism and Hospitality Virtual Tours, Natural and Wildlife environments, Ocean Life, Retail Industry, Events and Entertainment, Towns, Cities and Countries Territory organization, to Archeology, Sociology, and History Studies. But before exploring these applications, let’s take a look into the real outcome that this technology have for our culture and society.

The cultural change that this media innovation carries, expresses what we stated before regarding a new perspective of our environment. Being able to see better our surroundings under this revolutionary technology, it allows us to gain an improved spatial awareness which means “knowing where you are in relationship to other objects in your surroundings and how that relationship will change in the near future as you and other objects around you change positions” (http://www.geocities.com/glendoyle/figskate/
spatial.html). The spatial awareness term is also referred as situational awareness, by professional VR photographers.

In other words, situational awareness is the critical social necessity that we are supervening through the implementation of the VR Photography as an innovation in the field. The contribution to the society that this media technology presents is very powerful in the means that we can say that the Spatial Awareness is one of the components of Situation Awareness; it is the understanding of the location, in 3D space, of particular objects or participants within a given environment. For instance, in a military mission, spatial knowledge is helpful in order to know the relative location of enemy targets, as well as friendly and neutral players within a given scenario. This means that the VR media can be used to maximize our appreciation of the world, providing us with an extraordinary capability that in the past, during the early stage of regular film photography was not even possible to be in the minds of the people, it was a concept outside of their imagination. Now, people are using this media to impress others.

Before going any further, it is time to introduce the most common usage of this media innovation into what is being called today as Virtual Tours. A Virtual Tour “is a series of digital images that are stitched together to make a complete 360° panoramic image. This image is then displayed through a viewer window. The final virtual tour slowly pans the entire 360° of the image, creating an immersive effect that makes the viewer feel like they are actually in each location! At any time, viewers can take control of their experience by clicking on an image and dragging it left or right, upwards or downwards” (http://vrway.com/faq.html). Virtual Tours allow viewers to zoom in and out, there are also navigational interactive maps where you can click on any hotspot an a Panorama will appear on the window, you can even move within scenes by clicking on arrows, or another cool effect is going inside buildings, upstairs, by using the navigational tools integrated in this virtual experience that can be used for public relations purposes.

Virtual Tours allow people to view an environment without having to physically travel to their location of interest. Through virtual tours, people can get information and experience which may not otherwise be available to them, preview a location before an actual visit, and make more informed plans and selections. And most virtual venues are far from exotic; virtual tours often fulfill practical, everyday queries about a potential destination. With the quality and accessibility of virtual tours improving and broadband penetration rising, people are increasingly turning to the Internet to get a feel for such areas of personal interest as colleges and universities, tourist and vacation locales, historical sites, museums, real estate, and hotels.

Nowadays, we are experiencing a boom in the marketing strategies from many businesses and industries which uses Web-Based Virtual Tours to attract and impress prospective buyers. As an example we can refer to the Queens College – CUNY Virtual Campus Tour developed by a highly skilled team under my supervision where I acted as the Project Manager for the Office of Converging Technologies (http://www.qc.cuny.edu/welcome/Pages/tour.aspx), it is a promotional piece for the College providing a visually stunning introduction to the campus for those who have not visited before but also because of some practical applications. Prospective students and, more importantly, their parents will be easily able to view the campus and all the services rendered at the College, this facilitates the decision making process to choose where to go to study, in which it is an advantage for the Institution to use this format to turn browsers into buyers. In addition, this technological enhancement offers to the community a better interaction with the students, it is in fact a different approach to how the Institution communicates with future incoming students. As students and parents demand more information to help them make the best higher-education decisions, the Internet is rapidly becoming the preferred medium for "browsing" colleges, universities, and two-year schools.

In its recent survey on the use of information technologies in college application processes, the Art & Science Group, Inc. (http://www.artsci.com), a marketing intelligence firm for higher education, found that more than 78 percent of high school seniors use Web sites to hunt for college information, and a survey of visitors to CampusTours (http://www.campustours.com) found that 64 percent of respondents use the Internet to narrow college choices. Web searches are easier, faster, cheaper, and more powerful, and online resources can help students identify schools that fit specific personal criteria.

Moreover, a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that 45% of online American adults have taken advantage of this Internet application and taken virtual tours of another location online... On a typical day more than two million people are using the internet to take a virtual tour (http://vrway.com/faq.html).

With this boom regarding the usage of VR Photography to develop Virtual Tours that are being used as marketing, and educational tools, a World Wide Community of VR Photographers, and VR Virtual Tour Developers have been established until the extent of the conformation of two International Organizations, the International Virtual Reality Photography Association (IVRPA), and the International Association of Panoramic Photographers (IAPP), also World Wide projects such as “The World Wide Panorama” (http://geoimages.berkeley.edu/wwp/) where panoramic photographers from all around the world are able to publish their VR Panoramas into this Website, it had contributed to the union and growth of this World Wide Community.

The International Virtual Reality Photography Association (IVRPA) is an international association of professionals who create and produce interactive, immersive images. And as their say on their Website their mission is “to promote and support the uses of image based VR and related technologies worldwide through education, community forums, networking opportunities, manufacturer alliances, marketing assistance, and technical support of our Member's efforts” (http://ivrpa.org). Similarly, the International Association of Panoramic Photographers (IAPP) mission as stated on their website is “to create a membership network to educate, promote, exchange artistic and technical ideas and to expand public awareness regarding panoramic photography” (http://panphoto.com).

We can see that as we covered during class that each technology innovation came from a previous one, putting as an example that the printer couldn’t exits without the invention of the handwriting, and the handwriting only could happen with the evolution of the language, and that each and every single innovation responds to a social and cultural necessity based upon the historic context in which the humanity has evolved, the VR Photography Revolution is a respond to the social necessities to have faster and easier access to the information without the need of experiencing in person the environment because we can visit it virtually via remote access through the World Wide Web, a better spatial and situational awareness, and in some way to satisfy our human curiosity to explore other places from the commodity of being at home in our PCs or anywhere on the go through Mobile Technology devices such as the Smartphone, and Pocket PCs. One last observation to this conclusion will be the fact that the human kind is using this technology to join together into a World Wide Community where the knowledge and experiences are being shared and taught to the next generations, in this way we are moving toward a Convergence Culture where there are no bounders, nor limits in the way that we express our ideas, and solve the marketing needs of the businesses and industries by implementing new technologies, such as the VR Photography. It is a Revolution because it is continuously changing and enhancing our appreciation and experience of the Reality, of the World it self.