Search…

X3 Photo Gallery Support Forums

Search…
 
rembo
Topic Author
Posts: 2
Joined: 21 Nov 2008, 08:06

support for 360 degree images with navigation

05 Jul 2016, 10:28

Since i have some new equipment which allows for 360 degree images i would love support for these images in imagevuex.
Any chance of that?
 
User avatar
andreamarucci
Experienced
Posts: 308
Joined: 01 Mar 2011, 11:13

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

05 Jul 2016, 12:18

This could be interesting indeed :-)
 
User avatar
mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

06 Jul 2016, 02:35

rembo wrote:Since i have some new equipment which allows for 360 degree images i would love support for these images in imagevuex.
Any chance of that?
Certainly - This is something we have always intended to implement into X3. We are currently busy building the new www.photo.gallery website, but we will look into it in a few months for next X3 release batch.

PS! For the record, the current "popup" window has relatively good support for panoramas. When a visitor clicks to "zoom" the image, they will be able to scroll the image horizontally with mouse movement. I assume you are requesting a dedicated panorama-viewer, which creates an interactive 3D "spherical" view from the panorama image?
 
localhost
Experienced
Posts: 158
Joined: 20 Sep 2011, 07:09

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

21 May 2017, 20:12

I second to this feature requests. Recently I have the capability to shoot a 360-degree image and would love to have this supported.
 
User avatar
mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

22 May 2017, 00:39

localhost wrote:I second to this feature requests. Recently I have the capability to shoot a 360-degree image and would love to have this supported.
I was going to start looking into this next week, after X3.23.0 (this week). Would you care to explain for which panorama-format you will be preparing your panoramas? There seems to be three, all of which will be supported in X3:

1. Flat Panorama
Not really a true panorama format, but just an ultra-wide image like the ones an iPhone can stitch together in "panorama" mode. The X3 panorama viewer for these images will simply show a scroll/pan function without 3D distortion. Example of source:
Image

2. Equirectangular
Single-file equirectangular panorama sources (2:1 ratio) can be mapped into a true panorama 3D, like this:
www.marzipano.net/demos/equirect/index.html

Example of source file for an equirectangular panorama:
Image

3. Cubic
Cubic multi-source panorama can be mapped into a true panorama 3D, like this:
www.marzipano.net/demos/cube-single-res/index.html

Cubic panorama requires 6 square images, for example like this:

Image
 
localhost
Experienced
Posts: 158
Joined: 20 Sep 2011, 07:09

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

22 May 2017, 05:34

2. Equirectangular
 
erReSsePhoto
Posts: 19
Joined: 05 Dec 2011, 04:28

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

19 Sep 2017, 13:44

Hi any news about 360° images support ?
Thank you 
 
User avatar
mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

20 Sep 2017, 04:49

erReSsePhoto wrote:Hi any news about 360° images support ?
It's top priority. First we are releasing X3.24 in a weeks time, then panorama plugin will be included in X3.25 following after. Sorry for the delay.
 
User avatar
mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

19 Aug 2018, 06:19

Hi folks, sorry for the late response in regards to Panorama in X3. I am now currently researching panorama for implementation into next X3 release coming very soon. In regards to this, I have a few comments, and I would like to ask some questions about your workflow. I would also like to hear any other suggestions or comments you might have as I am brainstorming a bit here.

Questions
Shorts answers are sufficient.
  1. How do you shoot your panoramas?
  2. Do you use any tools/application to create your panoramas after shooting? I know some cameras have options to automatically stitch panoramas.
  3. What does your raw panorama format look like?
Comments
The reason I ask, is because I am curious about how your photos get from A to B in terms of how they need to be processed for web panorama viewers. There are a couple of panorama formats that can be used, but as referenced earlier, only one is suitable to be used in X3 galleries: Equirectangular
mjau-mjau wrote:2. Equirectangular
Single-file equirectangular panorama sources (2:1 ratio) can be mapped into a true panorama 3D, like this:
www.marzipano.net/demos/equirect/index.html

Example of source file for an equirectangular panorama:
Image
Why not cubic or multiresolution?
Cubic format (demo) creates a similar result as equirectangular, but requires 6 images. Since this format contains multiple image, it is illogical to expect X3 to deal with it automatically from a gallery where one image in the folder represents one image in the gallery. How would it create thumbnails? How can X3 know that 36 images might represent 6 images?

X3 design implementation
Our idea is to implement panoramas into X3 in three ways:
  1. Popup [main method]
    The main method to interactively view a panorama image, would be to open the viewer in a popup when an image in a gallery is clicked. This would be similar to the existing X3 popup method, but I don't think we can use the same viewer because they share too many of the same interface gestures and would likely crash.
  2. Page Gallery
    It would also be possible to display all images in their respective panorama containers in a vertical layout. However, even as I write this, I see many problems: Crash with touch scroll events, heavy CPU usage for rendering multiple panoramas and heavy loading (panorama images are likely to be much larger file size).
  3. Custom Content
    Likely we would also make the panorama plugin available for a page's custom content also, either to open in a popup, or embed directly into the page. For example:
    Code
    <div data-panorama="filename.jpg" data-panorama-option1="true"></div>
Additional formats
X3 may support FLAT panoramas also (basically just panning without 3D projection), as well as PARTIAL equirectangular images (not 360 degrees).

Ugh Previews?
One challenge I can see, is that X3 cannot "normalize" equirectangular images for a page's gallery layout. Only the panorama viewer itself can do that. Thus, preview images in a gallery layout will look projected, like the image posted above. I do not see this as a huge problem though ... It's kinda clear to the visitor that they re panoramas, and when clicked, they will display properly in the panorama viewer.


Did I miss something? Thanks for any feedback! 
 
User avatar
Martin
Experienced
Posts: 651
Joined: 30 Jan 2011, 23:24

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

19 Aug 2018, 10:31

I used to take four pictures with my 8mm fisheye lens and stitched those with PTgui (Panorama Tools gui) into an equirectangular image.
The viewer I used was DevalVR. I don't know if this is still a leading application these days.
DevalVR showed the equirectangularin a 360 degrees world... so you could look up and down and rotate the image in every direction.
Oh, I remember that I used PTcubic to transform the equirectangular image to the cubic format where one of the six images was the view that needed a Photoshop correction.

Check out http://devalvr.videopanoramas.com/ maybe it's useful.
 
MaciejK
Experienced
Posts: 54
Joined: 25 Jun 2017, 14:27

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

19 Aug 2018, 10:59

Here are my answers:

1. My panoramas are shoot with normal DSLR camera equipped with Fisheye lens and panoramic head, Nodal Ninja in this case.
2. Second step is stitching together several images into one 360x180 panorama (spherical) in PtGui software, one of the most popular and in my opinion the best.
3. The output of ready panorama can be equirectangular image as well as cube faces. The second option is commonly used together with some scripting to view 360x180 panoramas on-line. Cube faces + appropriate code is industry standard so far yet obsolete approach i think.

Insights:


In my opinion, one equirectangular image as input approach for X3 panorama plugin is the best as many if not all 360 panoramic cameras support this format as raw output. 

Another thing is that this format can be already edited or post processed the same way like "flat" images in software like Affinity Photo or latest Photoshop. No need to use tricks with patching/post processing single cube faces anymore.

Also note that social media like Facebook already support direct input of equirectangular projection as well.

As conclusion it looks like single equirectangular image as input is the future.

X3 design implementation:

1. Absolutely right approach and I fully agree
2. Also good point, especially if panorama is projected directly from single equirectangular projection. 
3. Brilliant idea

In my opinion it is enough that panoramas are represented as thumbnails of equirectangular projected images in gallery pages. That is fine and fully acceptable.


Very welcome features for this plug-in would be:

- multi resolution support for really huge and detailed panoramas
- gyroscope and geisture support in mobile devices
- virtual tours support, but i think it will be to complicated just for simple plug-in

All this ideas i have already implemented in my X3 gallery with additional use of third party code and some workarounds to get it working with X3 pop-up http://www.kolasinski.art.pl/Galerie/Krajobraz/360VR/. I use multi resolution cube faces approach.

It would be very nice to have possibility doing it only within X3 environment.

Hope it helps.
 
User avatar
mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

20 Aug 2018, 02:01

Martin wrote:I used to take four pictures with my 8mm fisheye lens and stitched those with PTgui (Panorama Tools gui) into an equirectangular image.
That's good!
Martin wrote:The viewer I used was DevalVR. I don't know if this is still a leading application these days.
DevalVR showed the equirectangularin a 360 degrees world... so you could look up and down and rotate the image in every direction.
I think this was some kinda Quicktime-plugin anyway. X3 will be using either Marzipano or Pannellum for rendering in modern HTML5 canvas (no plugins required).
Martin wrote:Oh, I remember that I used PTcubic to transform the equirectangular image to the cubic format where one of the six images was the view that needed a Photoshop correction.
Good to know that you are familiar with both formats.
 
User avatar
mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

20 Aug 2018, 02:02

MaciejK wrote:Here are my answers:
Thanks. Good to see we are more or less on track. Some comments:
MaciejK wrote:- multi resolution support for really huge and detailed panoramas
I believe this is already part of the 3rd party plugins we intend to use. As mentioned though, I don't see how this can be combined with the gallery module if it is multi-image. Perhaps we can implement a trick. In any case, this would definitely be possible from the content panorama plugin. We may need to prioritize default implementation first though.
MaciejK wrote:- gyroscope and geisture support in mobile devices
This should already be part of the plugin. It will be a challenge to implement all options, as gyroscope might not always be suitable, although gesture should be. There are also dozens of settings like FOV, max_fov, min_fov and so on ...
MaciejK wrote:- virtual tours support, but i think it will be to complicated just for simple plug-in
I can't see how this can be part of the gallery module, but it could be configurable via content plugin. Not first priority.
MaciejK wrote:All this ideas i have already implemented in my X3 gallery with additional use of third party code and some workarounds to get it working with X3 pop-up http://www.kolasinski.art.pl/Galerie/Krajobraz/360VR/. I use multi resolution cube faces approach.
Yup, saw it earlier and was impressed :thumbsup:
 
User avatar
GeoPal
Experienced
Posts: 227
Joined: 20 Dec 2007, 12:56

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

22 Aug 2018, 05:48

Hi Karl, 
I am also waiting for the plugin, but don't have the time to write/read now.
Just a quick answer:
  1. How do you shoot your panoramas?
    DSLR with fisheye for spherical 360/180 panoramas, and DSLR with long lens for cylindrical panos
  2. Do you use any tools/application to create your panoramas after shooting? I know some cameras have options to automatically stitch panoramas.
    I use PTGui for stitching and krpano/Pano2vr to make it web viewable.
  3. What does your raw panorama format look like? 
    Equirectangular.
About the presentation and implementation in X3- preview image of the pano and on popup to rotate if equirectangular or to zoom if just large cylindrical panorama. (not 2:1 ratio). I have tried embeding html code from krpano in X3 and it works, but is tedious task if you want to show only "active" panoramas. I have seen option to switch between regular 2:1 image and VR rotating panorama- this is for the popup and could be great, if you enjoy looking at hires equi panos.
Thanks!
G
 
User avatar
mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: support for 360 degree images with navigation

22 Aug 2018, 06:43

GeoPal wrote:
  1. How do you shoot your panoramas?
    DSLR with fisheye for spherical 360/180 panoramas, and DSLR with long lens for cylindrical panos
  2. Do you use any tools/application to create your panoramas after shooting? I know some cameras have options to automatically stitch panoramas.
    I use PTGui for stitching and krpano/Pano2vr to make it web viewable.
  3. What does your raw panorama format look like? 
    Equirectangular.
Thanks. We are on track.
GeoPal wrote:and DSLR with long lens for cylindrical panos
Question about the above if you don't mind. How are you hoping to view a cylindrical pano? In a flat renderer (eg not projected)? Or do you have an example of a cylindrical pano source in a viewer? The reason I ask, is because this does not seem to be supported by marzipano, which is the leading renderer we plan to implement into X3.
GeoPal wrote:I have seen option to switch between regular 2:1 image and VR rotating panorama- this is for the popup and could be great, if you enjoy looking at hires equi panos.
You mean a button to toggle between the original source image and the rendered output? There are viewers that may support a "play" button that goes from the original SRC to the rendered panorama, but I have yet to see a toggle, which would be quite a heavy technical implementation.