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See more, Look around Your Web sites can grab more attention with interactive panoramic and immersive imagery
Maybe you've already seen one—those interactive 360-degree photos that let
you click and drag to pan in a full circle right, left, or even up and down. You'd agree that if a picture's worth a thousand words, these 360-degree interactive pictures are worth 360,000. They're rapidly gaining pace on the World Wide Web, and
they've gotten cheaper and easier to produce (as I'll explain further on). Search the Web for "panoramic virtual tour," and you'll find a ton of real estate, sports, event, travel destination, cruise, and other sites sporting 360-degree interactive images that you "tour" to view the offerings. It's one of the hot new things on the Web--and something that you can starting putting on your Web pages. Folks call it "immersive" photography, though the term actually covers two types of
images: panoramic images and true immersive images. Panoramic images offer a 360- by about 60- to 100-degree view, essentially the inside of a cylinder. In contrast, true immersive images offer a 360-by-360-degree view, letting viewers pan around the inside of a sphere, from floor to ceiling. Intel's Artmuseum.net uses Don't miss a fascinating tour of the newly refubished Why are Web designers moving into immersive imagery? Many I've spoken to agree on several issues. People absorb more when they view something on screen in 3-D and can manipulate it.
Basically, they get more visual information exploring images this way, and it sticks in the mind better than a static, 2-D image. Immersive imagery simply provides more visual information per byte. Of course, these images also take longer to download, given their typical 100K to 250K file size. Also, some situations just naturally lend themselves to this kind of view. A single picture of a room can't convey the feeling of standing in
that room the way one of these photos can. The same holds true for objects you want to sell; when people can spin them around in a 360-degree view, they seem more real and give the viewer more of a feeling of having actually seen the item. Immersive image files provide more visual information but take longer to download. People tend to spend more time on your site if you offer these images; they learn more information while they're there and then, in turn, may be more likely to buy. As I'll discuss further on, you can place clickable "hot spots" within these images to trigger events such as links to other
panoramas or other Web URLs, views of close-up graphics, and sound. Maybe the correct question is, "Why shouldn't you?" Several enterprises wasted no time moving to Web-based interactive panoramic or immersive imagery. The real estate industry, for one, saw the sales potential of Web-based immersive images early on. The "virtual tour" is now a common feature on sites featuring residential homes, condos, and even vacation rentals and office buildings. These sites typically present a static floor plan of a model home or rental. They sport clickable hot spots for loading and viewing immersive images of rooms, patios, gardens, etc. Builder Online has some excellent examples, and visitors can view a model home around the clock, long after the home is sold. This site uses the Live Picture system that lets you include hotspots so you can travel through the entire home, all in the panorama window. Bamboo.com does it for you The easiest way to add panorama images to your site is to use the bamboo.com service. For $99.95, they'll send a videographer to a home for sale, process the bamboo™ Virtual Tour, and make it available on their web site. Bamboo even offers a service that can e-mail these virtual tours. The e-mail version includes it's own built-in software so anyone who can figure out how to save an e-mail attachment can view the panoramic tour. Bamboo has versions that run on older browsers that don't use Java, and more powerful versions for Java-enabled browsers. Bamboo now offers this service for small inns and bed & breakfast establishments. Luxury hotel chains and deluxe cruise lines are also jumping on the immersive boat ride, but your small bed-and-breakfast can enjoy the same advantage. Swisshotel
was among the first deluxe hotel chains to offer 360-by-360-degree immersive photography on its corporate Web site. You can't jump on the mattresses, but you can virtually visit rooms, bathrooms, and hotel facilities to get the "feel" before making reservations. Ditto for tours, whether home-grown bus and van tours or cruise-ship lines. Folks can get a better idea of what you offer and start making informed inquiries. And you also can better promote your town or region with
immersive imagery. Check out If you need other ideas, check out sites such as Seattle in the Round, which promotes the city as the home of special events, specifically the PGA tournament. The PlaceBase Web site offers panoramic tours of high-tech employers so job seekers can view a company's facilities and neighborhood setting on-line. This site is aiming to create an on-line visual database, comparable for visual content to what Yahoo is for textual content. Also, check out how professional sports leagues use immersive photography to enhance fan involvement at their Web sites. You can apply this approach to sports leagues in your area. This also holds true for sports tournaments, car shows, and conventions--promoters are turning to immersive imagery to make them come alive on-line. These sites also help preserve Web-interest after the event, in anticipation of coming events. The Web pages for recreational businesses hope to hook folks into visiting a facility, whether a casino, skydiving club, or whatever, by giving them an on-line taste of the experience. Sky Dive Sebastion, of Sebastion, Florida, lets you meet the staff and check out the facilities—including parachute packing and the landing area—on-line, before you actually show up. I'm getting carried away here, but, fact is, there's virtually no end to it. Like I said earlier, hit up any Web search engine
for "virtual tour" or "panoramic," plus an interest area such as skiing, Italy, or medical, and you'll probably find some site with a virtual pan-immersive tour. You'll find college campuses, corporate headquarters, museums, art exhibits, stuff like Microsoft's CarPoint auto-marketing site, and photojournalism at CNN, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, etc. The technology you'll have to master to create immersive photo images and put them on your Web site varies from moderately easy to complex. But first off, you need to decide between panoramic or true 360-by-360-degree immersive images. See a quick comparison of all these products True immersive Web imagery puts you in the center of a virtual sphere. Usually, you click and drag your mouse in any
direction, and your view automatically pans around or up and down, from carpet to chandelier. Three companies now offer tools to create immersive images; there was only one company a year ago. A little history will help you understand your choices. IPIX Interactive Pictures Inc. (IPIX) currently holds a patent for one of the technologies used to create the spherical views of true interactive immersive imagery for the Web. IPIX immersive images are shot with a matched digital camera and fish-eye lens combination that takes two opposing hemispherical shots of a space. You use a tripod, with a special camera-position mount (called a "head") to line up the two shots just right. Special software then fuses the
hemispheres into the IPIX spherical file format. (The only spot missing from the scene will be the small portion beneath the camera, obscured by the tripod. Folks often stick a logo or company URL in that small space.) Web visitors view a finished IPIX either through a downloadable IPIX browser plug-in or through a small Java applet that automatically downloads when needed for a visitor's viewing session. The IPIX viewer sports controls
panning left, right, up, down, diagonally, in, and out. Other controls let you set the panning speed. The Java viewer lacks speed controls. You render images specifically for the IPIX viewer or for Java (discussed further on). For Web-based IPIX, you'll need to invest in one of the IPIX hardware-software bundles. These typically include one of several popular "megapixel" digital cameras on the market, along with a compatible fish-eye lens attachment, a tripod
"rotator" arm for positioning the camera for the two shots, and software for rendering and viewing the immersive images. Kits range from $1,200 to $3,500, depending on the camera. (Check the Important to note: Currently you also must pay a $25 per
image licensing fee for each IPIX image you render into final, viewable format. IPIX handles this fee through a software metering scheme called Wizard Keys. You purchase a set of keys from the IPIX Web site that install with the IPIX software and enable you to save a final image. Each save deducts one key. And you don't have to do it all yourself. Interactive Pictures offers an IPIX Virtual Tour Network of real estate digital photographers. The IPIX Virtual Tour Network offers real
estate brokers and agents a turnkey solution for creating and posting properties on Web sites. You just call a toll free number (888-887-9252) to connect with this network and arrange for a photographer to come out, shoot the property, and post the images in less than 48 hours. IPIX immersive: the pros IPIX immersive: the cons
Infinite Pictures Infinite Pictures offers its patent-pending SmoothMove Spherical Photo Solution product, currently for Windows. This is a $1,499 bundle including a Kaidan QuickPan Spherical Tripod Head and Infinite Pictures' SmoothMove software suite. Using just about any camera with 14mm wide-angle lens and Kaidan "spherical" head, you shoot two or more rows of photos—at least one of the upper hemisphere and one of the lower hemisphere—covering the
entire scene horizontally and vertically. Software then seams together the rows of overlapping photos into a spherical panorama. With SmoothMove's horizontal and vertical stitching approach you pay no licensing fees, unlike the $25 per image charged for IPIX images. You can download and install a SmoothMove viewer plug-in for the Windows version of Netscape Navigator from the company Web site. The Internet Explorer viewer is an Active-X control that
automatically downloads and installs the first time you enter a page to view a panorama. A Macintosh browser plug-in should be coming soon, according to the company. You can view a sample image at the company Web site. Stitched panorama: the pros Stitched panorama: the cons I've alluded to the "stitched" panorama approach, but here's the whole story. Apple Computer got this rolling with the invention of QuickTime VR (Virtual Reality). QTVR offers a way of combining overlapping photographs into interactive panoramic scenes, easily navigable on screen. What's faster, smaller, and looks better than QTVR?
QTVR was the first on the market, but it has some big drawbacks. First, it's file sizes tend to be much larger than the others. For example, for the A stitch in time:
Stitched panoramas all use stitcher software to analyze the content of overlapping shots, compensate for perspective and parallax, and detect edges to align objects and combine the shots into a realistic-looking panorama. You'll now find almost a dozen stitcher application programs
In general, 360-degree stitched panoramas require 10 to 18 overlapping shots depending on the lens you use. Enroute, for example, claims that its QuickStitch 360 stitching application can align and stitch hand-held shots of partial panoramas. But, by and large, you're limited to shooting from a level tripod and rotating the camera at the nodal point of the lens. (That's the point where the light beams coming from your subject cross over to focus on the rear of your
camera—check with your camera or lens manufacturer.) You then import digitized image files into a stitcher application that blends them into a single panorama. Next, you save the pan in one of several possible formats, including QuickTime VR movie, JPG, or proprietary formats. The resulting panoramas are 360 degrees horizontally and anywhere from 60 to 100 degrees vertically, depending on camera lens and the stitching software you use. Stitched panoramas can
be your cheapest option, in terms of equipment and software. Most types of cameras will work, though digital cameras are preferred for Web work because they eliminate the time and expense of film processing. A standard tripod with a pan head is the only accessory. Software is typically under $100 and can be as low as $40, with no licensing fees required. Live Picture even has a hosting service for your images, and it's a great place to Enroute's Really good, really reasonable
If you have a little bit of technical knowledge, you should take a look at PMVR (Poor Man's Virtual Reality) from Duckware. What I like about this is its speed, simplicity and the fact that it has a very unique floorplan feature. You can use any
stitching software, then this system uses a very small 12K Java applet that runs on any operating system. The floorplan feature lets you link the panorama to an overhead floorplan that turns to illustrates what direction you're viewing. It's simple, effective, and really helps you understand where you are. I haven't seen another program that does this and combined with the very small download and inexpensive shareware approach, this is a winner.
This is shareware which means you can use it for free, but if you find it useful, then as an individual user you pay $29, and if you're a commercial customer, you pay from $79 for five images to $499 for 100 images. To download the a Fusion template that's setup for this system, Panorama, Portal lens—360-by-100 If you have to shoot hundreds of virtual panoramas, be aware of Be Here's Portal lens system. It can shoot a 360-by-100-degree panorama with a single click of the shutter, but it's expensive and serves a limited range of
cameras. And the Portal Lens images I've seen on the Web don't seem quite as sharp as those of competing technologies, though that's not necessarily a bad trade-off, considering the one-shot convenience. Note also that its one-shot approach is your best option for capturing 360-degree scenes with moving objects. A range of Be Here Portal lenses fit Nikon bayonet, Canon EOS, MamiyaTM 645 Pro TL, or Kodak DCS digital 460 or 560 camera mounts. The Portal lens packages, including lens
and software, run about $5,000. Be Here charges no per-image license fee. And it only works with very expensive digital cameras, not the consumer-grade models. While deciding on a technology approach to creating immersive imagery for the Web, you must also consider how
your visitors will view the images from their browsers. At press time, none of the latest Web browsers (Netscape Navigator 4.6 and Microsoft Explorer 5.0) includes software for viewing any of the common immersive file formats, particularly QTVR, IPIX, LivePicture, RealSpace, nor any other. That means that for optimal viewing, the browser will need plug-in software to handle particular formats. But, as I discuss further on, Java applets may avoid this. Web site visitors can download plug-ins and install them for
their browsers, but some are quite bulky. Apple's QuickTime 3.0 plug-in for viewing QuickTime VR is a whopping 7MB download, for example. Many designers I spoke to felt that plug-in requirements presented a serious hurdle to their viewership, depending on the nature of the site. Many visitors aren't necessarily technically inclined and approach Web browsing as a form of interactive television. To avoid the need for downloadable browser plug-ins, many
developers opt for immersive authoring software that provides alternative Java-based viewers. These are small 10K to 40K "applets" that load only when needed to view an image. Our product table indicates that authoring software supports Java-based viewing. Creating a Web page with immersive images destined for Java viewing is more complicated, since you must mesh the proper code for enabling the Java applet download. Vendors typically provide template code that you can modify for your own
pages, but it's not necessarily for beginners. No plugs Finally, some of these programs, such as PictureWorks SpinPanorama let you create still, wide panoramic pictures that don't require any kind of additional viewing software, but also aren't aren't interactive. These are like the panoramic images you can take with certain still cameras, such as the those using Kodak APS. This can convey a 360 degree view in a still picture. It's not quite as exciting or interactive, but the file sizes are much smaller, and it can be more practical if your visitors don't have newer computers. Conclusion Photographers have often used panoramas to help convey a feeling of space, so there's a great potential for interactive panoramic images to help create captivating Web spaces. And, of course, the interactivity involves the viewer with the site, making a deeper impression, aiding and streamlining
customer decision-making. As data rates on the Web speed up, panoramic images will look better and display faster. Isn't it time you immersed yourself? Links
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