At 1:31 PM +0000 6/12/02, Nmuta Jones wrote: >I have seen two viable alternatives in Shockwave: > >1. The skybox by Barry Swan. Looks even better than QTVR and you can even pan ALL the >way down to look at "floor" or pan ALL the way up the look at "sky". It should be at >http://www.theburrow.co.uk
This looks close to what I was thinking of, but his demo is a bit slow. I also wonder why he uses a box instead of a sphere, and I wonder if that would make this technique unusable for photo VR panoramas? >2. GlomTime VR-- I cannot remember the author. I just got finished deleting my copy >of it, but it is more of a left and right 360 degree pann. I don't think this one >uses actual Director 3D. The latest version has hotspots wired into it. If you can't >find it on google write back. Unfortunately, the google link is expired. It also looks like this was only a solution for VR objects, not panoramas. I assume that it wouldn't be that hard to make a VR object in Flash these days. >I'm not sure that 95% of viewers have Shockwave installed. If the plug in is your >biggest issue, then I would do it in Flash, but that's just my opinion. This effect >would be relatively easy in Flash, and most people DO have the Flash player at least. > I saw a Flash version of this as well. I have seen the fake VR images people make in Flash and it is really nothing like a real VR image. It has none of the spherical distortion which gives VR images the feeling of "really being there." Does anyone have the recent stats on Shockwave penetration? Quicktime only has about a 25%-40% share (depending on who you talk to) -- and the real problem is that while IE will let you automatically update the shockwave plug-in using Active-X, Gates has donne everything possible to try to prevent you using anything other than WMP to view .mov files. >But a lot of it depends on your source images. Are you using a 3D modeling package to >create the 3d world, or are you stitching together photographs? I would be starting from stitched-together photos, but I assume if I have to I could move them into a 3D program and map the image onto a sphere there. There are a number of tools that allow you to stitch a spherically distorted VR panorama with complete 360� images. --Randal [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
