I've uploaded a couple of new panoramas, all feedbacks/critiques to
improve the panoramas or/and the site itself are welcome.

www.360mh.com/

Thanks,
Mahmood

Hi Mahmood,

I think you files will be much smaller if you restrict sharpening to areas
that will really benefit from it. Viewing the panos from a pc without video
card, I see a lot of "shimmering" (which is usually caused by sharpening) on
the water and ground. Your file size will be greatly reduced if you leave
those areas unsharpened. I also always leave the sky unsharpened.

Regards,

Carel Struycken

--
View this message in context:
http://www.nabble.com/New-Panoramas-for-critique-tf4364550.html#a12441913
Sent from the PanoToolsNG mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

I think your Panoramas look very good ,
and you have a great handling of nadir shots in most of the panos.

Skinnarviksberget panorama looks slightly "flat" and there is a quite a
halo around the plane ( Tone mapping ? ) .

In "shopping rush " there is some  power lines across the street  and those
looks slightly
jaggy
and pixelated .

I'm not bothered so much about shimmering in water , because it stops
with the movement , but maybe sharpening is giving also steps on the power lines
.


Otherwise very good job with such a contrasty scene as in NK pano.

--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, Carel <cs@...> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Mahmood,
>
> I think you files will be much smaller if you restrict sharpening to
areas
> that will really benefit from it. Viewing the panos from a pc
without video
> card, I see a lot of "shimmering" (which is usually caused by
sharpening) on
> the water and ground. Your file size will be greatly reduced if you
leave
> those areas unsharpened. I also always leave the sky unsharpened.
>
> Regards,
>
> Carel Struycken
>
> --
> View this message in context:
http://www.nabble.com/New-Panoramas-for-critique-tf4364550.html#a12441913
> Sent from the PanoToolsNG mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>

Thanks Carel for your advise.
It actually makes sense not to use sharpening on water and sky, a very
good point that can both lower the shimmering when moving on some
computers and reduce the file size. I have to put it into practice to
see how much extra time it would take to exclude sky/water and how
much it reduces the size.
The shimmering problem is something that I don't see at all on my
computer when using DevalVR and just a little when using QT, only when
I move the panorama but I can imagine that it can be a bigger problem
on  some systems.
I will definitely use your advise in some of (if not all of) my future
works.

Thanks,
Mahmood

Other than Panorama Factory, are there any other stitching programs
that can take advantage of multiple processors and 64 bit addressing?

Thak you Jann for your response, see my comments embedded in your
original message.

--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, "jann_lipka" <jann@...> wrote:
>
> I think your Panoramas look very good ,
> and you have a great handling of nadir shots in most of the panos.

Thank you.

> Skinnarviksberget panorama looks slightly "flat" and there is a quite a
> halo around the plane ( Tone mapping ? ) .

That one is tone mapped all right, I have not learnt this hdr business
very well yet, evertime I use it, my images end up very flat and too
soft. I must be doing something wrong there...


> In "shopping rush " there is some  power lines across the street
> and those looks slightly jaggy and pixelated.

I'm not sure what you mean by power lines, so no comments there


> I'm not bothered so much about shimmering in water , because it stops
> with the movement , but maybe sharpening is giving also steps on the
power lines .
>
>
> Otherwise very good job with such a contrasty scene as in NK pano.
>

Thank you again,
Mahmood

--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, "Mahmood Hamidi"
<mahmood_hamidi@...> wrote:
>
> I've uploaded a couple of new panoramas, all feedbacks/critiques to
> improve the panoramas or/and the site itself are welcome.
>
> www.360mh.com/
>
> Thanks,
> Mahmood
>
Hi Mahmood,
this is fun that you have very similar name of your domain as mine and
both take up interest in virtual panoramas.
My domain www.mh360.com ( old pages) consists of first characters of
my name too.
I wish you good luck for pano-shooting.
Martin Hrdlicka :-))
www.mh360.com
www.panorama360.cz
www.virtualczech.cz

--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, "panovrx" <mediavr@...> wrote:
>
> It is possible to set the self-timer setting on a 5D to 2 secs
> (rather
> than the default 10sec) by using self-timer with mirror lock (and
> save
> this a Registered Setting which can be accessed quickly from the C
> setting on the exposure mode dial).
>


Another alternative is to use a headphone plug (a typical one).

Uncover the N3 connector, set the camera to mirror lockup and manual
focus.

Then touch lightly  the 3 connectors with the tip of the plug. The
first time it will raise the mirror. The second it will fire the camera.

It is as good as a remote release, for those times you forgot to bring
it along, but still carry your headphones. It of course requires 2
operations instead of 1, but the camera shakes way less.

dmg

--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, "Martin Hrdlicka"
<martin.hrdlicka@...> wrote:
>
> --- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, "Mahmood Hamidi"
> <mahmood_hamidi@> wrote:
> >
> > I've uploaded a couple of new panoramas, all feedbacks/critiques to
> > improve the panoramas or/and the site itself are welcome.
> >
> > www.360mh.com/
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Mahmood
> >
> Hi Mahmood,
> this is fun that you have very similar name of your domain as mine and
> both take up interest in virtual panoramas.
> My domain www.mh360.com ( old pages) consists of first characters of
> my name too.
> I wish you good luck for pano-shooting.
> Martin Hrdlicka :-))
> www.mh360.com
> www.panorama360.cz
> www.virtualczech.cz
>

Indeed Martin,
Actually, I checked mh360 first but you had been there first, then I
just swapt the the initials and 360. I may start using an alternative
domain name soon though.

Regards,
MH

On Sat 01-Sep-2007 at 20:11 -0000, Don French wrote:

>Other than Panorama Factory, are there any other stitching programs
>that can take advantage of multiple processors and 64 bit addressing?

hugin, though I'm not sure it has been built for any 64bit platform
other than Linux.

--
Bruno

I have checked the Javascript code delivered with the Microsoft HDView
plugin and found a way to sort-of annotate the panorama. You can read
more about it here:
http://thepanoramablog.blogspot.com/2007/09/annotating-gigapixel-images-using.ht\
ml

I'd appreciate opinions about the usability of such a feature...

Best regards
Bernhard

Hi again Carel,

I have uploaded a new pano in the "Nacka Strand" serie, its name is
"Nacka Strand (04)".
In this one I have followed your advise, no sharpening on sky or water.
How does the shimmering look on your computer with this panorama moving?

Deval VR:
http://www.360mh.com/ns04_dv.html

QTVR:
http://www.360mh.com/ns04.html

Regarding the size, it got smaller than the others in the serie.
N.S. 01: 3062 KB
N.S. 02: 2675 KB
N.S. 03: 2309 KB
N.S. 04: 2154 KB

Regards,
Mahmood

--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, Carel <cs@...> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Mahmood,
>
> I think you files will be much smaller if you restrict sharpening to
areas
> that will really benefit from it. Viewing the panos from a pc
without video
> card, I see a lot of "shimmering" (which is usually caused by
sharpening) on
> the water and ground. Your file size will be greatly reduced if you
leave
> those areas unsharpened. I also always leave the sky unsharpened.
>
> Regards,
>
> Carel Struycken
>
> --
> View this message in context:
http://www.nabble.com/New-Panoramas-for-critique-tf4364550.html#a12441913
> Sent from the PanoToolsNG mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>

Hi Mahmood Hamidi,

Deval Nacka Strand has less aliasing 'shimmers' on my screen than the
QTVR one, and in both it is most visible in the boats and some of the
trees. Unless a viewer is capable of (hardware supported) anti-
aliasing it will always be there if there is any sharply defined
detail in a moving image. Make murky, low-res VR's and it's gone, and
so will be al detail and image quality. Let's hope viewing technology
will catch up with high quality content soon.
May I suggest an adjustment of your FOV settings?
With VR's like these I think it would be better to use these:
max FOV = 80
min FOV = 45
initial FOV = 60
Zooming out as far as is possible now serves absolutely no purpose
(in my mind at least) and zooming in all the way only reveals ugly
compression artefacts, not detail. The initial FOV of 60 makes the
image a little more 'quiet' regarding aliasing noise without limiting
the view too much.
Other than that I think the image is a bit 'greyish' overall. I
certainly don't like oversaturated images, but this looks a bit too
flat to me. Do you use a calibrated monitor? If you don't maybe you
should consider buying the necessary gear, it really can make a huge
difference!

Regards,

erik leeman

(www.erikleeman.com)

--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, Bernhard Vogl <bvogl@...> wrote:
>
> I have checked the Javascript code delivered with the Microsoft
HDView
> plugin and found a way to sort-of annotate the panorama. You can read
> more about it here:
> http://thepanoramablog.blogspot.com/2007/09/annotating-gigapixel-
images-using.html
>
> I'd appreciate opinions about the usability of such a feature...


It works fine and fast ... it would be an improvement to have a
capability of panning/zooming into the target ... so you can work in a
wide view. Then you would need to have a  zoom out feature I guess
before panning/zooming in to the next target. Akin to the way Google
Earth implements a tour.

Peter

Mahmood,
Sorry I was not clear about "power cables "

Here comes a screen shot ( QTVR versions ) -  comparison
of NK Pano of yours with a similar
pano crop of my own .mov file .

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a3/Jann_Lipka/Bild236-1.jpg



Keep the good work coming .

regards

Bernhard, do you already know when you will be there?
At the moment I don't know if I'll have the time to join but if there
is any chance I'd really love to. It would help if I knew which days
to onsider.

Cheers
Juergen


--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, "Bernhard Vogl" <bvogl@...>
wrote:
>
> The Ars Electronica Festival - "Goodbye Privacy" - will soon take
place. Please see my Blog Post about details:
> http://thepanoramablog.blogspot.com/2007/08/ars-electronica-
festival-2007.html
>
> It was very much fun to meet some VR community members last year -
so is there anybody visiting the 2007 festival?
>
> Best regards
> Bernhard
>

Hi Erik,

Thank you for your response.
I suspect that you have looke on "Nacka Strand (4)", but might be
wrong. There are 3 others in that serie which I suspect show more
shimmerings in water that (4) as no sharpening was applied to the
water in that one.
Also, regarding the saturation, I agree that this last nr 4 was the
greyest of all and therefore increased the it a little bit, how does
it look like now?
Or do you think that the others also suffer of the same flatness?

Mahmood

--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, "erik leeman" <erik.leeman@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Mahmood Hamidi,
>
> Deval Nacka Strand has less aliasing 'shimmers' on my screen than the
> QTVR one, and in both it is most visible in the boats and some of the
> trees. Unless a viewer is capable of (hardware supported) anti-
> aliasing it will always be there if there is any sharply defined
> detail in a moving image. Make murky, low-res VR's and it's gone, and
> so will be al detail and image quality. Let's hope viewing technology
> will catch up with high quality content soon.
> May I suggest an adjustment of your FOV settings?
> With VR's like these I think it would be better to use these:
> max FOV = 80
> min FOV = 45
> initial FOV = 60
> Zooming out as far as is possible now serves absolutely no purpose
> (in my mind at least) and zooming in all the way only reveals ugly
> compression artefacts, not detail. The initial FOV of 60 makes the
> image a little more 'quiet' regarding aliasing noise without limiting
> the view too much.
> Other than that I think the image is a bit 'greyish' overall. I
> certainly don't like oversaturated images, but this looks a bit too
> flat to me. Do you use a calibrated monitor? If you don't maybe you
> should consider buying the necessary gear, it really can make a huge
> difference!
>
> Regards,
>
> erik leeman
>
> (www.erikleeman.com)
>

Hi there,
my old handheld Phone died so i got a new one: XDA Orbit (= HTC Artemis) running
WindowsMobile6 prof.

What would be a possibility to show panoramas on that device?
PurePlayer (Immervision) ?
Flash ?
PTVIewerME2 ?
???

As i am not yet very familiar with the operating system i did not try to install
any Plugins
until now. I would rather wait for a suggestion. Thank you - Peter

On 8/30/2007 12:59 PM, Don rambled on about ...:
> Hello pano experts. I have been lurking long enough. I hope to have
> some positive things to add to this group in the not too distant
> future, but right now I am in need of information.
>
> I am mostly interested in creating very large (gigapixel) multi-row
> panos. My motherboard just died so this is a good time for me to
> upgrade to the proper hardware and software to accommodate my pano
> needs. I searched this list for motherboard and only found one post
> that might help. In that post, mention was made of using Photoshop
> CS3 with Win XP-64 and 12 G of RAM on a Tyan 2895 motherboard. So,
> what do people think? Is this the best combination? Is it overkill
> or underkill?

It's WAY overkill for use with CS3.  Read this http://tinyurl.com/ysft7u
for the HOWs and WHYs of why CS3 can only address 3GB RAM.

Darn it.

> I expect that I will be using something other than CS3 for stitching b
> ut I am not sure what is the best for that, either. Or maybe not. I
> have been to the Wiki and see that there are a LOT of programs out
> there. What I didn't see is which of them are most suited for very
> large multi-row panos. Can any of them use 12 G of RAM? Which is the
> fastest? So, I guess I am looking for recommendations of
> hardware/software combinations that will best suit my needs.
>
> Like I said, I hope to be more than a seeker of information in the
> future. In fact, I have some projects in the works that I think will
> interest everyone in this group. More on that later. Thanks for your
> help.
>
> -- Don




Pat Swovelin
Cool Guy @ Large

Hi Mahmood,

Please be very careful with increasing saturation of a finished pano,
especially if it is only 8 bits in colourdepth! You'll get ugly
posterization (did I spell that correctly?) in clear skies and other
relatively featureless areas if you overdo it just the slightest bit!
It is much better to make corrected RAW-conversions (I really hope you
work with RAW and 16-bit TIFFs) and restitch using the script you
already have.
I'll have a look at the others and PM you, OK?

Regards,

erik leeman

(www.erikleeman.com)

--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, "Peter Braatz" <yahoo@...> wrote:
>
> Hi there,
> my old handheld Phone died so i got a new one: XDA Orbit (= HTC
Artemis) running
> WindowsMobile6 prof.
>
> What would be a possibility to show panoramas on that device?
> PurePlayer (Immervision) ?
> Flash ?
> PTVIewerME2 ?
> ???
>
> As i am not yet very familiar with the operating system i did not
try to install any Plugins
> until now. I would rather wait for a suggestion. Thank you - Peter
>
Hi
I'm interested in this subject as well.
I've made a phone tour for Immervision PURE Player for Pocket PC
http://www.billward.org/Wemyss_small.zip
which works fine, hotspots made same way as full size Immervision
panos - the Pocket PC applet will open full size Immervision .ivp
files as well. It's very straightforward.
Info on Immervision PURE Player for Pocket PC is at
<http://www.immervision.com/en/multimedia/multimedia_products/multimedia_product\
s_2_5.php>

Download PURE Player for Pocket PC 1.0 (.CAB file) free. This has to
be installed on the Pocket PC.
<http://www.immervision.com/en/multimedia/multimedia_download.php>

I emailed Immervision to ask if I could distribute
PUREPlayerForPocketPC.cab myself, along with any panos, but they replied:

"Dear Bill,

Thank you for choosing PURE Software for your panoramic projects.

The current license for our PURE Players does not allow
redistribution. All
the players are freely available for download on our website. The only
thing
we ask is a simple registration. This allows users to be assured they are
downloading the latest version of the players.

Best regards,"

While this has logic it means that a phone surfer will have to surf to
immervision's site, register and then download - I think this is too
much for a casual pano viewer, fine for a pano enthusiast.

Incidentally I found this link which has some info about download
costs of data on mobile devices.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/bbc_news/newsaudio/cost/index.shtml>
I only mobile surf on free wifi, but this illustrates another issue.

Also I have not managed to make work PTVIewerME2. Has anyone else?

Bill

Hi Bill,

thank you fo rthese detailes informations. I did not have a look on the
Immervisions
Homwpage. I thought the "normal" PurePlayer would run on that PPC (i own a
licence of
PureTools). I managed to get it installed (quite fast - no problems) and
launched my first
pano on the littel screen 2 minutes later:-))

I mainly wanted to have this to show people asking what i am doing when taking
images in
public places. Thanks - perfect!!!
Regards - Peter

--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, "Peter Braatz" <yahoo@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Bill,
>
> thank you fo rthese detailes informations. I did not have a look on
the Immervisions
> Homwpage. I thought the "normal" PurePlayer would run on that PPC (i
own a licence of
> PureTools). I managed to get it installed (quite fast - no problems)

Hi Peter

I see on the Immervision site it says Windows Mobile 5 is required and
you've got it working with Windows Mobile 6 prof, is that correct?
Useful to know that, I've only got Windows Mobile 5.

Bill

--- "erik leeman" <erik.leeman@...> wrote:

> It is much better to make corrected RAW-conversions (I really hope you
> work with RAW and 16-bit TIFFs) and restitch using the script you
> already have.

Well, I corrected the saturation on my "almost finished" pano.
It was 16-bit tiff, extracted from RAW though, all the way to the
stiched pano.

Mahmood

Hello Juergen,

You can find me at the Ars Electronica from Friday to Sunday. If needed
i'll stay one or two days more.
So, if you are interested, i'd suggest you come to Linz to see the
annual "Klangwolke" ( http://www.klangwolke.at/ )
This year it seems to become more visual attractive than the last
year...  ;-)

Best regards
Bernhard

Juergen Schrader schrieb:
> Bernhard, do you already know when you will be there?
> At the moment I don't know if I'll have the time to join but if there
> is any chance I'd really love to. It would help if I knew which days
> to onsider.
>
> Cheers
> Juergen
>

I bought HTC Herald, unfortunately it does not support PTViewerME2 due
to lack of 3D Graphics support. Having watched PTViewerME2 work on a
much cheaper Nokia phone, I had not thought that this would be such a
major problem. Your problem must be the same. Immervision's player for
mobile is not very good to be honest, I just bought the software just
to create samples as it is the only format (that I found) I can use on
HTC Herald at the moment. But its Warping is just terrible. I am using
Windows Mobile 5, installed Flash Lite that supports Flash7 content
authored for mobile, so Pano2VR would not work as it supports Flash 8
or 9, and probably would need extra functionality to support mobile
even if it could output for Flash7. One of the newer HTCs will support
3D Graphics. I will buy another handheld phone with in-built GPS
system and support for 3D Graphics, but they have not brought all the
models into Turkey yet. I would appreciate if any of you have a model
that you can recommend. I hope my experience helps some of you in your
decision-making process.

Serkan Serttop

Sometime around 2/9/07 (at 02:03 -0700) Pat Swovelin said:

>It's WAY overkill for use with CS3. Read this http://tinyurl.com/ysft7u
>for the HOWs and WHYs of why CS3 can only address 3GB RAM.
>
>Darn it.

Darn it indeed.
Just to be clear, this is Photoshop CS3's limit, not the overall
limit for the whole suite. You can have Photoshop grabbing its
maximum 3GB and launch other CS3 apps as well, each using whatever
other RAM it needs and/or is available. So 8GB of RAM (for example)
is a good thing even though Photoshop won't be able to use more than
3GB.

But yes, darn it about Photoshop CS3's RAM ceiling.

k

Hi Mahmood,

Very nice panoramas, congratulations!
Could you tell me the gear you uset in "
		 The Swedish Museum of Natural History"?

Thanks in advance,

Ricardo

----------------------------------------

				 From: "Mahmood Hamidi" <mahmood_hamidi@...>
Sent: sábado, 1 de setembro de 2007 09:32
To: PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com
Subject: SPAM-LOW:  [PanoToolsNG] New Panoramas for critique

I've uploaded a couple of new panoramas, all feedbacks/critiques to

improve the panoramas or/and the site itself are welcome.

www.360mh.com/

Thanks,

Mahmood






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, "serkanserttop" <serkanserttop@...> wrote:
>
> I bought HTC Herald, unfortunately it does not support PTViewerME2 due
> to lack of 3D Graphics support. Having watched PTViewerME2 work on a
> much cheaper Nokia phone, I had not thought that this would be such a
> major problem. Your problem must be the same. Immervision's player for
> mobile is not very good to be honest, I just bought the software just
> to create samples as it is the only format (that I found) I can use on
> HTC Herald at the moment. But its Warping is just terrible.

Hi,
i can really confirm that: i can not complain about the quality of panning on
this device. It´s
not as smooth as Spi-V, but to show people what this is all about quite ok!

I also tried PTViewerME2 but did not get it to work due to the lack of 3D
support as you have
mentioned here.

Peter

--- In PanoToolsNG@yahoogroups.com, "wardnet2001" <billward@...> wrote:
>
> I see on the Immervision site it says Windows Mobile 5 is required and
> you've got it working with Windows Mobile 6 prof, is that correct?

Hi again,

yes - it´s running on WM6 prof.
It is not recognised as an application, so i always have to navigate with the
FileExplorer to the
folder to start it, but maybe that can be changed somehow (I only have this PPC
only for 6
days now.)

Peter