A whole new set of equipment - need advise please

You can't beat PTGui for price, speed and quality.

Aldo is right on about PTGui

It took me a little while to get the hang of it, but I've using it to do the stitching of 3 fisheyes, then converting the Equirectangular tiff into an iPIX image. Kind of like several members seam to stitch with PTGui then convert to QT with Pano2QTVR (Aldo's suggestion)

My iPIX software does a good job on 2 fisheyes, but has a problem with the alignment near the zenith when it uses 3 fisheyes. And it has very limited manual adjustment capabilities

And US$89 for PTGui can't be beat

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Hi there guys sorry for the delay, been incredibly busy. I downloaded the demo ptgui, and i was very impressed with the outcome.

There are some huge price differences between using Realviz and PT-GUI+Pano to QTVR.

Are there any real differences in what realviz can do, or is it just a better packaging?

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

Ian
I just downloaded the RealViz Stitcher 5.5/DS demo but haven't had time to try it out.

I'm an iPIX Interactive Studio user that may have to switch to another product some time in the future. My IIS license is good til Sept. 2008. So I've got time to shop around.

I'm looking at PTGui as an excellent "stitcher" but it lacks the bells & whistles of a product like IIS or RealViz.

If I read the features of RealVis Stitcher Unlimited correctly, it can output actual webpages with the Java Viewer already in them. I have a template in MS FrontPage that I set up working webpages for the iPIX images I'm selling my customers including a basic index page. The webmasters love the working webpages because they don't have to figure out how to host the images. They just drag & drop the contents of the CD I send them on to the server and edit the pages to look like the rest of the website. If the RealViz Stitcher can output a set of webpages for the images you're delivering, it would be a valuable tool.

Also RealViz Stitcher 5.5/DS outputs other formats Shockwave W3D and VRML like IIS with the Format or Enhancer Packs. I haven't acutally delivered and virtual images in these formats but have had conversations with a web designer who was setting up a site for his customer and wanted something compatable with Flash. W3D was as close as I could get, but he wound up using just Flash movies with no actual photos or video in them.

I'm seeing myself working with several programs in the future depending on the project. For real estate the 2 fisheye stitcher in IIS is fine. For higher quality (higher price) products I'm using 3 fisheyes. PTGui does a much better job of stitching 3 fisheyes, so I use it for the stitching and convert the Equirectangular TIFF into the iPIX format after the "stitch."

Another IVRPA member mentioned using RealViz Stitcher for most work and PTGui when RealViz had problems with stitching a set of images.

Maybe you could start out with PTGui & Pano2QTVR (very affordable after your huge equipment investment) and add RealViz to your software tools later, after trying out their Demo

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

W3D is the file format used for importing 3d file into Adobe Director. Director is a different thing than Flash, and the Flash Player (which, at some time in the past, was confusingly named Shockwave Flash player) is different from the Shockwave Player (which plays back movies created with Director). Just setting you straight on that.

I wonder why they don't combine the 2 players together, they are both quite small, and it has always confused me why they haven't done this. Especially now adobe own it all. They could even add it to a multi plugin system, PDF, Flash and Shockwave. To allow one download and the whole lot would be installed, couldn't be that difficult!

Its a bit like Photoshop and Illustrator, i would happily pay the same price as they cost individually if they were merged into one (so they aren't loosing out financially), imagine how much more effective and efficient your computer would run with only one software open rather than the 2 and having to swap back and forth.

They could call it Photostrator, or Illushop :o)

But suppose this is going in a direction miles away from VR Photography.

Can you tell I'm avoiding working, cutting dam images out for VR Objects :o(

Ian

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

Aldo
I knew Shockwave was different than Flash.

Something like you can put a Flash file in a Director/Shockwave movie, but can't put a Shockwave movie in Flash file.

As the author of Spi-V, are you the Macromedia Director expert for IVRPA?

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Nope I'm afraid Java isn't installed with Windows. I reformat my PC about once every 12 months, I tried about 4 weeks ago, and found my windows disk scratched, so had to buy a new one from Microsoft (£15 as a replacement with same license key) which is a Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2, and it includes nothing at all. I Always thought it had Flash and Java with it, but it doesn't have anything at all.

I suppose very few people buy computers like this, and usually buy pre-made from places like Dell which have many products pre instaled in a bundle. But i remember i bought a few years ago a Packard Bell PC and it didnt even have flash installed never mind Java, but had tons of junk like Toy Story games and Learning software on it. Oh and not forgetting that virus called AOL was on it too.

Also the other huge problem with Java is that if you don't have it installed and your browser visits a site which uses it, it doesn't warn or tell you what the problem is, it just puts a red X as if it was a dead image, making the visitor believe the site has a problem rather than the computer they are using requiring extra software.

I have this saved in my faves
http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/
Of course those may well be manipulated by Adobe to be in their favour one way or another, but it shows that more people use Flash than Java and almost double Quick time.

Doug i can understand that you see many more Java used sites for that's the industry you are in, in the same way i do as a QT developer. But in general my sister, neighbor or best friend who is a joiner, will very rarely find a site with java, and in so will have much less chance in having java installed than flash which is very common as content, making the VR tours in Java/Ipix invisible.

At the moment i am rebuilding my portfolio site, and i have split it into 3 mirrored sites, Java, Flash and QT. This should make sure that there is a good chance that anybody visiting my site in one way or other will view my tours. I will be making flash as the default player as i personally believe this is the way to go now in the interest of the visitor.

Its a shame that with the extremely high success of Ipods, i was hoping that QT would improve massively, but i have no idea where to find third party stats about plugins and what the correct response is.

But i do believe strongly that flash is on more computers than any other plugin, even when recognising that QT is bundled with MAC OS, i still think more people will have flash.

With this in mind, it is far better for my clients to receive the VR tours I produce, in Flash with the option of Java or QT.

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

Ian
I double checked about Java being included in Windows on Microsoft.com and confirmed the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine was included from Windows 95 through the first years of Windows XP. It was a version of Java tweaked by MS to run better in Windows.

In 2004 Microsoft and Sun Microsystems settled their lawsuit. Its not clear if this is when MS stopped shipping MSJVM or before, but some versions of XP did have it. XP came out in late 2001.

Here's the link to the FAQ that explains what happened
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/java/faq.asp

With Java installed as much as Windows is installed until about 2004, that's pretty complete coverage.

The link you had about the Flashplayer installed is an updated version of the one I had seen a year or so ago. The old one I saw inlcuded the iPIX Plug-In with very low installations in comparison.

I don't think that survey was manipulated, just not entirely accurate. My thinking is that many users don't actually know what on their computer. The MSJVM doe't display the Java Coffee Cup on the Windows Taskbar or the Coffee Cup "splash" when the iPIX Java Viewer or PTViewer were used like the Sun Microsystems Java install does. So I suspect some respondants didn't know they had MSJVM

The other thing about the Flash survey that caught my eye was only 84% had Windows Media Player? If the survey was representative of the computer market sales, that should be around 95%, since the commonly accepted sales figures for Apple computers is 5% market share, leaving close to 95% for Windows based computers, less a small percentage for Linux and other OSs.

I ran a search on Google for "Apple Computers" "market share" and got results confirming the approximately 5% market share in these links;
http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/03/20/marketshare/index.php
http://www.tuaw.com/2005/10/11/apples-marketshare-climbs-to-6-6/

That means there was either a larger number of non-Windows users than the general market or the respondants didn't know exactly what they had on their computer. Flash takes a conscious effort to install, Java & Media Player are already there.

But Flash has reached the EXTREMELY HIGH install rate of 96% making it a really serious player. I was impressed with the samples on the Pano2QTVR link you had in a post. There played smooth and looked good. I'm going to have to consider Flash output, especially to a web design company that does a lot of Flash work but doesn't produce VTs in Flash. They use iPIX???

There were 2 reason I suggested you consider maketing I mages viewed with the Java PTViewer

1. Although 96% of web surfers have Flash, major customers (the big industries that purchase virtual images) strongly support Java viewers, but very few use virtual images in Flash. It often isn't the decision of we photographers what technology a site will use. Its often the company/corporation or web designer. I delivered a tour to the Residense Inn by Marriott North in Albuquerque, getting a copy of Marriott's VT specs; Marriott.com only use images viewed with the PTViewer or iPIX Images at this time. End of subject. StarwoodHotels.com (Westin, Sheraton) uses ICEPortal.com to host and distribute the VTs of their hotels. They specify PTViewer type images. ICE can convert most image types they're provided with. They reject those they can't. The Hilton website (Hilton, Doubletree, Embassy Suites) supports iPIX, WMV video and PTViewer images. They support others I couldn't identify, but none I've seen are Flash . Radisson has an exlusive supplyer that used to produce iPIX, now uses PTViewer images with QT for the Full-Screen versions.

You mentioned real estate in the UK is sold differently than in the USA in another post, so Realtor.com may not be a factor there. But here the PicturePath hosting/distribution service only accepts iPIX, PTViewer and iSeeMedia technologies. Two are displayed with Java Viewers. I don't know much about how iSeeMedia's images are displayed. There is a way to provide links to tours hosted by the photographer and have them posted to Realtor.com through PicturePath so you can use any technology you want. But $5 hosting fee per tour is pretty hard to beat.

Real estate and hotels/hospitality have been the biggest buyers of virtual images for quite a while and its not likely to change soon.

The point is the "buyers/users" of virtual images lean towards Java at this time. My examples don't even need help with hosting, they already know how. They just need the images. Flash will undoubted be supported by some of these customers very soon, but not many yet.

2. The other reason I suggested Java was your plan to use PTGui. The Equrectangular JPEG output from PTGui is what the PTViewer uses. Even if its not your favorite.

I think your plan to have 3 versions of the images in your portfolio is a smart move. It shows you can deliver whatever a potential customers needs or wants. And they can get more use from the images by working with you. I've usually recomended using the iPIX file type and iPIX Java viewer becasue of the progressive image loading like QT has, but I plan to provid Equirectangular JPEGs to ICEPortal.com to use if the same hotel purchases their VT distribution service. Something I really liked about iPIX Interactive Studio with the Format Pack is I can output Quicktime, Shockwave W3D, Cubic Strips (all 6 cubic faces dewarped, in a row, great for touch up and editing), VRML and X3D. Even though I've never delivered any of these, I can offer them to my customers. So I look like a VT photographer with a full range of products instead of one who can only deliver one specific technology

Take care
Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

And Breath :oD

Lol, that was some write up lol.

I'm a little confused about the way VR Tours work in realtor.com as it really is quite different from the stuff we have here, so i think i would like to know a little more as we are rebuilding the system we made a few years ago now which you can see on our demo server www.gorillaproperty.com.

I would like this to be international rather than local or national, but i will have to see what time does with it after it is finished. It was supposed to be finished 1st Dec 06, but it is behind by about 3 weeks, so hopefully after Xmas.

I always thought that you hosted the VR Tours onto a server, and then added the link to that tour from a site, in the same way as linking to movies on you Tube or My Space. This is exactly how we are building the property system now, to allow almost any VR Tour to be displayed and also exported in the same way.

Its a shame that so much seems dictated over there by a few websites. I think if you put together a well worded email/document and sent it to them explaining the benefits of flash and the amount of people who have the plugin etc etc, they will probably look into it quite seriously. At first I'm sure they will send back the usual "Thank you for your enquiry, we will look into this and decide in the future if this will be a viable service for out clients" blah blah blah.

I bought my copy of XP pro the day it was released here, as i needed one anyway as was ready to buy 98 sp2, before finding this was to be released. Even the first edition of XP Pro sp1 didn't have java machine installed. Then it was stolen from my office, probably by a temp worker, and i bought it again in 2004, which def didn't have it on. Then again a few weeks back i had to buy the dam thing (i should buy shares in the company) and it still doesn't have it. So I'm not sure if it is packaged Windows disks with pre made machines, or what but i always need to visit java.com after installing it on a machine, and download java to work.

One think i was always worried about though with java, is that when the image is being downloaded, it actually shows the path in the status bar, and you can find a link to that image in the source code very easily, which makes image theft very simple. With QT it is much more difficult to strip a copyright note of an image and in flash it is almost impossible to even a well established web user.

But like you said with the demo of the flash demos, it is very smooth and fluid, nothing like the versions i have seen before, they have a preloader showing download percentage and are viewable by many more visitors than any other tour type.

My tours are produced mostly for independent companies with their own sites, and any web designer/company that struggles to use flash needs shooting. I employed a freelancer a little while back and he had never used the java set up before and struggle, but i suppose once you have done it once, it is easy to replicate again and again.

I think we have exhausted this topic now lol

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

I think it is safe to say that I know quite a lot about Director, but I would not call myself 'the expert for the IVRPA' on this subject; basically I am a member like you are, I just happen to know more about Shockwave ;-)

Ado
I'm just beggining to play with Director and want to create virtual tour CDs and am curious what virtual tour technologies Director/Shockwave support

I snagged the Xtra for iPIX a year ago and on a CD called "London Restaurant Guide" the iPIX Images run fine, even if the computer being used doesn't have the iPIX Plug-In or Stand Alone Viewer installed. The CD makes no attemt to install anything. This would be perfect except my IIS license will run out eventually so i don't want to get too invested in using iPIX with Director.

Another CD "360 Degrees of Ancient Dwellins of the Southwest" uses QuickTime but the images won't play unless the computer has QuickTime installed. Is this the only way QT always works when used in Macromedia projects?

I noticed RealViz Stitcher would output W3D files supported by Director/Shockwave. IIS will output it too, so I could practice with files output from IIS if thats the best way to go. Then switch to RealViz Stitcher if I needed to.

And Pano2QTVR has a Flash converter, but I'm not sure if my Diector 8.0 supports Flash. I may need a later version of the program.

Is there an Xtra that will play the Equirectangular Projection JPEGs that the PTViewer uses?

I just starting to go through the tutorials for 8.0/8.5 and it would be great if some one whos had experience with Director could point me in the right direction.

Thanx
Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

SPi-V will run off a cd from inside a Director project without an install. See the SPi-V gallery for some more interesting examples.

But if you want to discuss SPi-V (or other Shockwave options), let's create a new thread.

Hi Doug, your right i think i'm going to go for the PT-GUI and Pano2QTVR with the flash license. I through a few image sets at the demo PTGUI which my original software photvista couldn't handle as i must have breathed to close to the tripod and moved it by accident whilst taking the images, and ptgui stitched them perfect. VERY impressed.

Apart from the export functions, i haven't really found any huge advantages of paying the massive money from realviz, even for the DS version, i don't mind taking the three images and going for the PT-GUI solution.

Also i think as of the new year almost all my VR tours will be exported in both QTVR and Flash VR formats, as I'm sick of clients and visitors not having the QT plugin when I'm trying to demo tours to them. But almost all of them have Flash installed, and if not it takes less than a min to install which the computer usually does automatically without the client doing anything. QT is just too big, and is packaged with Itunes (which i know is optional if the installer realises) and takes for ever to download and install. Especially when a client is becoming edgy and you can see is wishing he never accepted this whilst your trying to make polite conversation as QT downloads and installs.

One client this week said so you expect me to teach a viewer how to install QT if they call me asking how to view their QTVR tours if the visitor isn't confident enough to install it, and what about business clients who don't have access levels to install software on their PC or mac, and will need to call the admin guy/dept of the company.

I have to say i always tried to push QT rather than Java and Flash, but after seeing http://www.pano2qtvr.com/sample_flash.php i think i may well be changing over.

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

Ian
I've been impressed with what PTGui can do too. Especially the manual fine tuning of the Control Points to improve the stitch.

Your evaluation of RealViz Stitcher DS piqued my curiosity. I've come to wonder if 2 fisheye stitching is really a big deal to any one other than real estate VT photographers who need to be able shoot and stitch quickly to make any money. Two fisheye stitching stretches the limit of what the lenses can do. I think the only buyers for the Stitcher DS are iPIX users with a 2-stop rotator from iPIX who don't want to learn about new rotators and software. That's almost all of them.

And, although I can output several formats and file types from iPIX Interactive Studio, I've never actually delivered anything other than .ipx files to paying customers.

Your observation about clients not having the QuickTime player installed has been a selling advantage I've exploited for a while.
Many of the webpages I saw using iPIX Images gave the web surfer the choice of viewing with the iPIX Plug-In or their Java Viewer. There were actually 2 versions of the image. Like you say the Plug-Ins, Flash or iPIX, only take a few minutes to install unlike the QuickTime Player. The Java Viewers eliminate installation completely with Java use in web browsers almost universal.

Your client's comment about having to "teach a viewer how to install QT" is something I've pointed out a couple of times when I was competing with a local web designer who sells QTVR. I'm writing a series of articles for a small online hotel management magazine called HotelExecutive.com about how hotels can make better use of virtual tour & their websites. The next one is about how the hotel sales staff can guide a caller on an "Online Property Tour" over the Internet in "real time." It hits the viewing issue of a QT program install, plug-in install or use of Java viewer, right on the head. If a hotel reservationist is trying to show the differnce between a $200 and $300 a nite suite to a caller, installing QT is the least attractive option.

I've envied the quality I've seen in QTVR images for years, but couldn't get past the 30 minute download/installs I did a few years ago on Dial-Up connections.

Here's a link from PhotoWebUSA where you can see how they offer the best of both worlds. The "normal" viewing is the PTViewer, but the option of a "Full Screen" experience with QT is just a click away in the upper left

http://www.photowebusa.com/westin/loscabosHD/index.html

I even stopped delivering working webpages for my tours that use the iPIX Plug-In about a year ago, opting for 2 versions of the iPIX files, Standard and Super-Size, both viewed with the Java Viewer. When iPIX's main website iPIX.com went offline for a while, no one could get the Plug-In, so that cinched it for me that Java was the only way to proceed.

Although I was pretty impressed with the Pano2QTVR Flash examples. Hmmmmm?

A lot of iPIX photogs like me are learning alot more about other products and methods since the bankruptcy. The learning curve has been pretty steep and is showing me that a "one software product" business model just doesn't work anymore.

Have fun with your new "toys."

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Hi Douglas:

The Java Viewers eliminate installation completely with Java use in web browsers almost universal.

I'm curious about this statement; Do you have statistics on this, or is it anecdotal? I haven't found this to be as "universal" as everyone seems to think, and in my experience a Java install is as large and unfriendly as QT's.

Patrick Cheatham
--
CheathamLane | spinControl:VR
Berkeley, California
VR Photography
QuickTime & Web Development

Patrick
For the most part its anecdotal. When I've guided someone to my website to demonstrate what my virtual images look like it has been very rare they couldn't view them with the Java Viewer.

Those exceptions were usually computers on a company network where the virus/security software was set at an extremely high level blocking Active-X as well as Java Applets. One even blocked the Animated GIFs in the ad banners/buttons I was trying to show/sell them. The Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort adjusted their network security after their VT went on their website so their sales staff could see it on their company computers. There was no Java install required on any of them according to their IT manager.

Anecdotal in that a news story about a year ago told how Microsoft and Sun Microsystems made nice with each other and settled the lawsuit over Java. I vaguely remember they decided it was in the best interest of both their customers.

Also Java was preinstalled with Windows until XP?, if I remember right.

The Java download and install is large but much more likely to have been done because the uses of Java are far more extensive than just Video and VR viewing purpose QuickTime; Entire websites I use regualarly are run on Java; the company that runs the Albuquerque Multiple Listing Service private website wrote it almost entirely in Java applets. And PicturePath.com, the site that hosts and distributes VTs to Realtor.com and other major RE websites, is almost all in Java too. Both sites are memory hogs and run slow on my older machine. Time to add RAM again, I guess

A hotel that I was talking to about tours sent me a survey that showed vastly more Flash plug-in users than iPIX Plug-In users, which is undoubtedly true as Flash has many more uses (like Java)than the iPIX Plug-In's specific and limited purpose of viewing .ipx files. That survey showed Java installations much higher than Flash. It showed QT installs much higher than the iPIX Plug-In which makes sense to me since QT is a Video and VR player. I just tried to find the file, but maybe it was a link.

I viewed this "survey" as skewed because I don't think a lot of users even knew they had Java Ver.1. It pretty much ran in the background on my machine. I didn't get the "Java Splash" graphic until I re-installed Java a few months ago on my 5 year old computer and got Java 2. Now I get the "Java Cup" splash graphic when I load both the iPIX Java Viewer and PTViewer.

If I come accross that survey I'll get you a copy or the link

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM