fieldOfView | SPi-V devMulti resolution panorama - very poor viewing experience
Hello Forum,
After I finally managed to get PTGui working for optimizing two different kind of images(12x rectangular 8MP + 3x fish 12.7MP) to create a multi resolution panorama I found out that the combined pano (center part High and nadir/zenith part Low res)in QTVR format is way to large to use for web display even with huge compression.
I asked Aldo for his help to tackle this problem and he was so kind to provide me this xml script for SPi-V:
<tour>
<scene id="multiresolution">
<panoelement id="lowres">
<image id="lowres-img">
<!-- best results with cubic image -->
<layer class="base" type="bitmap" src="lowres.jpg"/>
</image>
</panoelement>
<panoelement id="highres" zorder="2">
<image id="highres-img">
<!-- best results with cylindrical image -->
<layer class="base" type="bitmap" src="highres.jpg"/>
</image>
</panoelement>
</scene>
</tour>When running the script in the SPi-V standalone viewer the result is very poor, the image is fuzzy, and very unsharp in both Hi and Low res part and panning is almost impossible. Loading time was also very long.
When I drop just 1 image at a time on the viewer the result is fine so each pano is OK when used individually.
Size of the 360x180 degree low res equirectangular is 7000x3500 px - 1,4 MB JPEG
(because PTGui is unable to output 6cubes into one image I used the equi format instead of the adviced cube format).
Size of the 360x54 degree high res cilindrical is 21000x10500 px - 4,6 MB JPEG
My computer is a MacBookPro 2Ghz - 2Gb ram - HD free space 30GB - OSX 10.4.8.
Q) The total size of both JPEG images is fine compared to a single QTVR so I really want to know what I can do to improve the viewing experience ?
Regards, Wim
PS, Aldo bedankt voor het script en je support.
Re: Multi resolution panorama - very poor viewing experience
You misunderstood part of the instruction I sent you.
For the highres panorama, DO NOT make a full 360x180 degree panorama! Instead, use a cylindrical strip, with just the highres part. As a test, first drop that cylindrical image onto SPi-V and see how that performs. Then try with the XML script.
Re: Multi resolution panorama - very poor viewing experience
Sorry Aldo, I made a typo in the posting about the height of the HI res image.
The HI res image is stitched as a cilindrical strip, the size is 20913x3319 px and it shows perfect when viewed seperately and so is the LOW res image.
Only when they are viewed combined with the xml script the result is poor of both HI and LOW res image.
Do you have any suggestions ?
Thanks, Wim.
Got link?
If you have a link, I can see if there's anything special going wrong.
Having said that, 20913x3319 is quite big. The highres panorama probably just fits in your video ram (so it displays ok), but the combination with the large(ish) lowres version puts you way over the edge.
Try with something like a 5000x2500 and a 12602x2000 pixel panorama and see how that works for you.
Problem solved
Hi Aldo,
After resizing the equi's to the suggested size the problem was gone.
I thought that 256 MB VRAM was enough to hold the combined pano but obvious it isn't :-(
Perhaps there is a simple method to calculate the max pixel size the VRAM can hold ?
The only issue left is that in the combined pano I can not zoom in as deep as in the HI res strip, so the zoom is limited. But I guess that is just a matter of adding a parameter in the xml script.
Thanks for your help, regards Wim.
Re: Problem solved
<cameralimits> should do the trick.
I'ld still love to see a link ;-)
Link to combined pano
Hi Aldo,
Here is the requested link: http://www.dmmdh.nl/multiresolution/multiresolution.htm
The files are 3.2 MB together and I think thats quite good for a 360x180 degree 12602 px width panorama.
As you can see the blend in the nadir part is fine but I have to find a workaround to get the zenith part OK.
Besides this last issue the solution to provide a better resolution by combining Hi and Low res images works pretty good.
I found the VRAM AppleScript calculator of Ian (not so very precise but good enough to get an idea about the VRAM needed) and it shows that I can enlarge the images a little bit but then other people will have problems I guess.
It was easy to fix the zoom with the
<camaralimits>params.Aldo thanks again, regards Wim.
PS: the pano shows the harbor of Ouddorp (The Netherlands)
Re: Link to combined pano
Not bad at all!
Some observations:
<param name="swRemote" value="swContextMenu='FALSE'">andswRemote="swContextMenu='FALSE'"On my 32mb testing system, the scene loads and then takes a couple of seconds to become responsive. The resolution of both panoramas is bumped down to half the original width and height, but the experience is still smooth enough.
Images are updated
I replaced the original Hi and LOW res images for better and larger ones. (Ian's calculator predict that approx. 190 MB VRAM is needed).
The link is the same, http://www.dmmdh.nl/multiresolution/multiresolution.htm
I tried to use the application ImageSPiVer to create a cube-strip without much success. For some reason the output is way to dark and therefore not useful. I use just one color space (sRGB) in my entire workflow and the image I converted was also tagged as sRGB.
If someone knows a better converter for OSX that can output a cube-strip for SPi-V without altering the colors and respect the color space I like to know.
BTW, I tried both CubicConverter (with disabled QT importer) and PTMac for creating the cube faces with the same (bad) results.
So the LOW res pano is still an equirectangular but I skipped the black center part. Now the view is better while loading.
The High res cylindrical is at the edges successfully blended with the LOW res images in PTGui, the edges are now fine.
The "half man" is deleted, but it is obvious that his dog is missing him in this VR scene ;-)
It is strange but when displaying an image in SPi-V that is way to large to hold in VRAM my iMacG5 (2GHZ/2GB RAM/128 mb VRAM) performs much better then my MBP with twice the amount of VRAM, the difference is huge.
Conclusion:
I tried SPi-V to see if it is a good alternative for QTVR for online publishing of huge pano files. I found out it is, but I still have to find a workaround for the limitations of the amount of VRAM to use the full potential of the source images.
Perhaps some "just in time" loading and processing of parts of the panorama will do the trick but unfortunately I am not gifted with skills to program and/or script at a high level, but luckily Aldo is qualified ;-)
Regards Wim.
ImageSPiVer
I did not know about ImageSPiVer, thanks!
(for other who did not know about this tool, it's a companion tool for CubicConverter and available from http://www.clickheredesign.com.au/downloads/)