A pretty comprehensive article on VR in the New York Times today,
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
Published: September 25, 2003
Borders don't bother Tito Dupret. When Mr. Dupret, a Belgian
photojournalist, travels in his homeland, an hour's drive in almost
any direction will put him in another country. "A border is something
I don't really understand," he said in a recent telephone interview.
So when Mr. Dupret embarked on an international mission to photograph
the 754 sites, from the Statue of Liberty to the Taj Mahal, that have
been registered as World Heritage sites by Unesco, it seemed apt that
he would document them as interactive panoramic images. These digital
pictures, which offer online viewers a 360-degree view, are
essentially photographs without borders.
Since Mr. Dupret left Belgium in July 2001, he has visited 52 places
and posted more than 270 panoramas at his World Heritage Tour Web
site (www.whtour.net), including 10 images of the Forbidden City in
Beijing that were added this month. Online viewers can explore an
Egyptian pharaoh's tomb that has been closed to visitors since 1991
or take a literal spin around Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
Mr. Dupret hopes the immersive nature and universal accessibility of
his photographs will stimulate interest in the World Heritage sites.
Given that his travels are largely self-financed and the number of
World Heritage sites is growing, Mr. Dupret, 32, expects his quest
to take another 20 years. But if he still has a long way to go, his
site demonstrates how far online panoramas have come in recent years.
Initially the panoramas were the province of enthusiasts who snapped
a careful series of photographs, used a computer to assemble them
into a horizontal array, and then displayed the results in a small
portion of a browser window. Viewers could rotate these cylindrical
images from side to side, but not up and down.
Several factors have combined to broaden the appeal of online
panoramas. High-resolution digital cameras have reduced the need to
build panoramas from scanned photographic prints. Image-stitching
programs, which automatically align adjacent and overlapping pictures
into a continuous field, are more adept at combining photographs
seamlessly. (((( (see below to read the remainder of the article)))))
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/technology/circuits/25virt.html
(you will need to register to read the article).
Mike Quan
IQTVRA President
IQTVRA --- the International QuickTime VR Association
Join us for "Summit in DC", an Interactive Media Conference Oct. 1-3, 2003.
Go to http://www.lightspeedmedia.biz/summit/2003/index.html for more info.
--
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