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Stitchless creative 360 VR panoramas - PanoMoments

Dustin Kerstein

New member
Please let me know if a little shameless self-promotion is against the rules. Apologies in advance.

I've been working on a different way to create engaging 360 VR experiences, and actually just launched a Kickstarter last week to try and connect with some photographers that'd be interested in capturing them. I'd love to hear any feedback you have on either the concept or the Kickstarter itself. Below are few examples of the kind of content you can capture. It's actually much easier than you would expect to create them, and they're more immersive as you're able to capture motion parallax.

https://www.panomoments.com/m/grand-central
https://www.panomoments.com/m/intersection
https://www.panomoments.com/m/baby
https://www.panomoments.com/m/billboard-one

What do you think? Would you be interested in capturing them? Any and all feedback would really be appreciated. And if you like the concept, please consider spreading the word.

Thanks,
Dustin
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Please let me know if a little shameless self-promotion is against the rules. Apologies in advance.

Hi Dustin,

It's all a matter of balance: to what extent you also integrate and make yourself relevant by taking an interest to other folk's work. We are a community - and we live or die by interest in each other's photography. In fact, like a TV series, we get to know aspects of the character of each person here - and we value that.

A major part of sharing and exchanging out art is immediacy of the image. So I'd suggest a cut-out or version of your work posted here that gives us a "tast" of your work, a "teaser" as if you are advertising a panoramic movie to be shown in local theaters. We always get a visual sampling of what the movie is about!

I've been working on a different way to create engaging 360 VR experiences, and actually just launched a Kickstarter last week to try and connect with some photographers that'd be interested in capturing them. I'd love to hear any feedback you have on either the concept or the Kickstarter itself. Below are few examples of the kind of content you can capture. It's actually much easier than you would expect to create them, and they're more immersive as you're able to capture motion parallax.

We're enthusiastic about advances that make it easier for expression of the beauty and otherwise of the world we observe. We're proud to have anyone here innovate. Just we insist to those who want to use OPF for self-promotion to embed themselves here by making substantial contribution to discussion.

So I welcome you and just ask you to make yourself at home and contribute by taking on some of the duties to respond to other folks work and actually show samples/excepts of your work in 2D here.

I will add capabilities for video as soon as my diversion with my sculpture work is behind me.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Dustin,

This kind of dynamic panorama is made uno of many more overlapping images, often using fisheye lenses. Instead of a fixed set of seams between a 5 or 20 shots, we may be seeing the results of 100 images, where adjacent pictures are stitched temporarily on the fly.

First I can recommend wholeheartedly the method of presenting panoramas in "Panomoments.com". What's unique is that adjacent images are stitched on the fly and that means that, if we rate in the sequence in which the overlapping pictures were taken, then we observe folk walking around the corner, couples meeting and hugging and the like. In other such panoramas, the entire overlapping series of images tends to remove moving objects and we can actually end up with an empty area where there were many people!

Advantages:

  • One can see the actions that were going on
  • Panos are more alive.
  • Very engaging
  • More engaging than classic panoramas as it has hearts beating all the time!
Shortcomings:

  • One has to upgrade one's browser to be able to view these panos,
  • The video doesn't automatically move forward in time by default, creating weird ambiguity
  • Sometimes the arrows on the keyboard will move the pano, sometimes not.
  • Where there are many people, as in a ? railway waiting hall, there is too much movement
  • There needs to be a floating video game type floating panel to reliable control the video.

Good luck, now spend equal effort on the work of others here!

Asher
 
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Dustin Kerstein

New member
Thanks for the great feedback Asher! In response to a few of your notes:

- We'll be adding support for other browsers soon.
- We may add in the option to enable auto-rotation after a certain number of frames have downloaded.
- There might be a bug in the arrow rotation code. Though it won't let you auto rotate until all frames are downloaded currently. We'll be relaxing that restriction soon.
- Yah, sometimes the movement can be distracting. Though the number of frames are part of the creative decision. If the motion is found to be distracting, you could lower the total number of frames. Though you'll need to be careful to stay above around 120 frames if you captured with parallax as the transitions will become more noticeable with lower frame counts.
- We'll be adding easier rotation control soon.

I'll also make sure to participate in other threads.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or thoughts.

-Dustin
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Thanks for the great feedback Asher! In response to a few of your notes:

- We'll be adding support for other browsers soon.
- We may add in the option to enable auto-rotation after a certain number of frames have downloaded.
- There might be a bug in the arrow rotation code. Though it won't let you auto rotate until all frames are downloaded currently. We'll be relaxing that restriction soon.
- Yah, sometimes the movement can be distracting. Though the number of frames are part of the creative decision. If the motion is found to be distracting, you could lower the total number of frames. Though you'll need to be careful to stay above around 120 frames if you captured with parallax as the transitions will become more noticeable with lower frame counts.
- We'll be adding easier rotation control soon.

That will improve the user experience.

I'll also make sure to participate in other threads.

I judged from the nature of your project that you have your own ideas of a dynamic window to our world. I like that a lot. What your app does is add life and presence to an otherwise frozen image that, now I realize is anemic compared to the potential of what you can achieve.

The mechanics of taking the pictures should be considered too. Any way to make getting to that huge number of images would be such a help in breaking the barrier to entering this field. I have no idea of other pano programs that can bring life back to a stitched image. But your success is obvious and a considerable contribution. What a superb accomplishment.

Asher
 

Dustin Kerstein

New member
I judged from the nature of your project that you have your own ideas of a dynamic window to our world. I like that a lot. What your app does is add life and presence to an otherwise frozen image that, now I realize is anemic compared to the potential of what you can achieve.

The mechanics of taking the pictures should be considered too. Any way to make getting to that huge number of images would be such a help in breaking the barrier to entering tis field.

Asher

Exactly! It's a way to capture a moment in a way that regular static panoramas can't, and also provides a much easier / consumable piece of content compared to 360 video.

It really is quite easy to capture them (assuming you have a robotic panorama head). Do you think you'd be interested in trying out the capture method?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
....

It really is quite easy to capture them (assuming you have a robotic panorama head). Do you think you'd be interested in trying out the capture method?

Yes, I have several Gigapan robots. Must you have just one row? I have never gone more than about 240 degrees and usually 3 rows. Here I I would do 360 but how many images per row. The overlap needed would depend on the distance to the moving subjects of interest, wouldn't it?

Asher
 

Dustin Kerstein

New member
Ok great. A Gigapan should work fine, but you'll be limited to slower rotations (>60 seconds) as I don't believe Gigapans can rotate very quickly. This means you'll end up with more of a stop motion effect, eg. the Grand Central PanoMoment, or something like this: https://panomoments.com/m/broomball (captured over a 5 minute period)

You'll just want to do a single row around 360 degrees and capture between 120-400 photos (the exact number doesn't matter). Don't worry about calculating the overlap. As long as you're using a fisheye (or ultra-wide) you'll have plenty of overlap. Ideally use a circular fisheye if you have one. You should also move your camera/lens in front of the NPP by around 80mm to emulate human head rotation. You can capture on the NPP if you'd like, but it won't be nearly as immersive. Capturing motion parallax is one of the primary benefits to PanoMoments.

Feel free to just do a quick test shot and then send me the photo-set via Dropbox or similar. Then I can render it for you, and then you can try out more once you're familiar with the workflow.

Let me know if you have any questions. Feel free to browse through a rough draft of a shooting guide here - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/panomoments/GzakeLevUhE

-Dustin
 
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