http://www.3d-360.com/

jtoeppen · April 2013

We have a beta site for viewing stereoscopic 3D panoramas here; http://www.3d-360.com/

One panorama is 18 billion pixels and all of the others panoramas are all over a hundred million pixels. Many others have been created but not posted because this is just our beta testing of the viewing process. This should work well with the Oculus as it already works with 3DHDTVs.

We have a variety of viewing modes including half height and half width over under and side by side. We use the mouse to control scrolling and our very deep zoom. I can see where turning the head to change the view is a natural. Maybe one just uses a wireless mouse wheel to control the zoom.

Anyhow, please give it a try if you are able and interested. The notion is that one could take virtual tours of a 3D-360 world. Let us know what you think and guide us if we are almost there.

thanks,

John Toeppen

yubinhydin · April 2013

that is pretty cool

drash · April 2013

Very cool indeed, thanks for posting! Mousewheeling for the deep zoom is great.

When I change the view to SBS, I see that the left image jitters a little bit occasionally, and also the mouse only seems to affect the left image, whereas the arrow keys correctly rotate both images. Am I doing it wrong?

Bacon · April 2013

Hey John,

Cool stuff! Can you post some steps to make it "Rift-ready"?

Thanks!

cybereality · April 2013

Looking good man!

rickardo69 · April 2013

This looks really cool , the idea of virtual tours in a 3D-360 world excite me more than playing games
thanks for showing us this John

jtoeppen · April 2013

The mouse has two modes based on its position in the top or bottom or the left or right SBS window. This is subject to future change. But the way it works in manual mode is that one position only moves one image, but the other position moves both of the images together. When we have automatic alignment you can't move the one alone. The mouse must be moved to the other side of the screen to move both images together to pan and zoom around. We have some user interface issues to resolve so that it is more intuitive.

I don't have an Oculus and I am not sure about its controls. It just seemed like an ideal way to view 3D panoramas and I am pleased that it works now. If you have advice on making a "Rift ready" interface we would like to know more about it.

Our goal is to create a global community of 3D stereopanorama creators and viewers. The notion is that it is a tool for fun, art, science, and education that also has commercial applications. Right now we are just learning how to shoot and display, make and use our camera systems, capture cool subjects, have fun, and get it to be self supporting. Collaborations are sought.

John Toeppen

troffmo5 · April 2013

Hi,
i would like to test one or more images with the viewer i have already written to view google street view images (https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=413)
Can you please send me a test 360Degree stereo image pair? If it it works and you agree i can modify the code so that it works with your image database.

jtoeppen · April 2013

This stereoscopic pair is about 360x180, 89meg, 23x8K pixels X2. They do not mail well, so I posted them here;

http://www.holographics3d.com/hg/galleries/pano/stereodemo/

These image sizes are at the limit of some computers. So, we use Silverlight or AJAX web hosted images that download only the part of the image that you wish to view. I have some posted here;
http://gigapan.com/galleries/7454/gigapans

Aligning images for viewing is critical for immersion, and there are many considerations. A pair of unaligned crossed images may be manually aligned here;

http://www.holographics3d.com/hg/galleries/pano/SummerPond.html

Jason linked the image controls for the two windows some time ago and got it to work well for anaglyph and side by side stereo. He now uses SIFT points to find and align corresponding points.

We look forward to work with others to create quality content, capture hardware, and viewing systems that make ownership and use of 3D viewing systems a pleasure. Panoramas are only a piece of the puzzle that we need to assemble to have some real fun.

John Toeppen

2EyeGuy · April 2013

The Rift is less than 2560x2560 for a complete sphere, or 6.5 million pixels.
For comparison, the VR920 is more like 7680x7680 for a complete sphere, or 60 million pixels.

danielbln · April 2013

My eyes hurt from fusing the SBS images on my fullscreen 27" monitor. Totally worth it though, those are some really nice gigapan shots!

geekmaster · April 2013

2EyeGuy wrote:

The Rift is less than 2560x2560 for a complete sphere, or 6.5 million pixels.
For comparison, the VR920 is more like 7680x7680 for a complete sphere, or 60 million pixels.

The number of pixels in the sphere depends entirely on the virtual viewing distance to that sphere. I am using a series of many concentric spheres of varying diameter. The distant spheres are viewed with more virtual magnification (just like using binoculars). And just like binoculars, using more than about 7x magnification requires a steady viewpoint (like a virtual tripod) and beyond 20x telephoto view even a stable viewpoint is difficult to pan without overshooting. When viewing my distant spheres with virtual binoculars, I see FAR MORE than a mere 60 million pixels. I would estimate at least a bazillion pixels (and perhaps even a gazillion pixels).

My closest sphere appears about one foot from the face. I control transparency of all the spheres, so I can view distant PixelBall bitmaps or nearby PixelBall bitmaps at my whim.

I can map my mind in these concentric PixelBalls viewable ONLY in my RiftDK, much better than my previous method of using a "memory wall" covered in post-it notes and reference material snippets. I call this virtual environment my "Mentarium" (Mental Planetarium). And I am using 3D-Panoramas to test it out.

I successfully built the chromiumembedded embeddable web browser, which I plan to incorporate into my PixelBall Mentarium, so that I can view 3D-360.com stereoscopic panoramas in my RiftDK.

jtoeppen · April 2013

Resolution upgrades are sure to come in the form of LCOS micro displays. Our current viewing system should work with 4K displays now as they are Flash based. I guess we would be grossly oversampling for OculusRift if we did not have zoom. I can understand why you need some sort of damping like stabilization at higher zoom. That is like my cameras. I could see where a click on a subject could function as a "target designator" for image stabilization. Your "virtual tripod is a good anology and I guess that I would add that it could also perform in ways that are better than a real "fluid head".

Relative motion of an image that is different than one's real motion can be disorienting if it does not have consistant game physics. I bet that lag would also be a consideration along with overshoot. I suspect that it might be possible to use rate of change to predict anticipated positions and display those in time for the head to arrive at the correct location.

If I were creating images only for the Oculus I would use a simpler camera system and create more panoramas by moving from location to location. Alternately, I can use stereo videos to connect locations or even make panoramic stereo movies. Another method that I currently use is to integrate my panoramas with multiple walk around viewpoints to create object models.

Examples of the photo generated models are posted here;
http://www.holographics3d.com/hg/galleries/main/models/3/turqgalsmall.pdf
http://www.holographics3d.com/calffalls.pdf
Click and drag the object to rotate. Hold control with click and drag to move sideways. Use the mouse wheel to zoom.

I am seeking a viewing system that could allow us to view 3D models in stereoscopic 3D that works with all platforms, especially 3D TVs. We learned years ago that posting in a format that converts to the desired viewing format on the fly is necessary. Otherwise, one stops taking photos and spends all their time converting, posting, and linking.

John Toeppen

http://www.3d-360.com/

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