360 degree panorama using HD View from MS Research

The technology for presenting panoramas keeps getting more and more amazing. Here's the result of using MS HD View to display a panorama from Foss Peak, MRNP.

Here's a bit more that I added to my panoramas website:

New: a 360 degree panorama from Foss Peak MRNP using Microsoft Research’s HD View. HD View is a new methodology  that produces results similar in type to those using the DevalVR viewer, but with greatly expanded capability. Absolutely *huge* panoramas can be viewed with little delay for the current section of the image to be downloaded. Note: HD View works only on Windows machines; I’ll soon experiment with the cross platform version that uses MS Silverlight.

www.larryscascaderesource.com/HDView/Fos...eak%20360%20deg.html


There are two ways to move around; with a hand tool, or you can toggle to the method used by Quicktime or the Deval VR viewer. The controls are in the upper right of the screen. Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel. Charles, before I start messing around with the cross platform version, would you actually be willing to install software on your Mac that originated with MS?   

Larry

Ps: the pan seems to be working this morning; yesterday afternoon it stopped working, I suspect because there is some link back to MS Research that was broken. Fingers crossed.

Awesome, Lar, works great.  Aren't I the little black speck traversing beneath Little Unicorn?  Wow, zoomed in you can actually see my shadow! What a great trip.
Thanks,
J

Yup John, that's you! You can even see your track where you cut in.

For platforms other than Windows, here's the same pan using Silverlight:

www.larryscascaderesource.com/HDViewSL/FossHDVSL/FossHDVSL.html

If you don't have the Silverlight browser plug-in currently installed, you should see an offer to install it.

The quality is not quite as good as the native MS HD View,  but it's acceptable I think. The zooming and moving smoothness is not quite as good, and it lacks some of the controls that HD View has, but the cross platform ability is a big plus.

Although these files are easy to view, they sure take a long time to upload. There are more than 2000 files that make up this pan, with a total size of ~25 megs. Wait till I start messing around with High Dynamic Range plus shooting in RAW!

Larry

Thats balm for the desk jockeys soul

That is awesome! How does one go about setting up a pano image in this program?

How does one go about setting up a pano image in this program?

Not hard at all. There is a nice explanation of the options on this page:

research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/hdview/

If you use the MS Image Composite Editor to stitch, then you can export directly to HD View, or HD View Silverlight. This is a very fast and easy stitching program that produces excellent results if you start with a quality set of images.

Another option (the one used on this pan) is to stitch in the program of your choice, then export to a .tiff or .psd file. Install the Photoshop plug-in, open your file , and export using that, either to HD View or HD View SL.

All of the above methods create a single folder, a large one at that, which you simply upload to your webserver. Then you just have to figure out the URL. That's the hardest part.

Larry