wwp@yahoogroups.com:
Re: suggestion
Bernhard Vogl 2005-Jun-27 09:27:00
Hello Yuval
Don't hit your balls too hard ;-)
I understand the concerns of a panographer for a universal and "always
available" technology to display panoramas. There is none at the moment and
maybe will never be. Only workaround would be a clever method to find out
capabilities of the client and display accordingly, as you suggested.
Every step in technology has its own kind of software that is more or less
standard for its time and technical possibilities.
Displaying (HQ-)VR panoramas it is Quicktime at the moment, Java has lost
it's "Pole position" due technical reasons (maybe Immervision can change
that). Maybe SPi-V will play that role soon. (not to offend anyone - just my
very personal point of view)
Just remember the Autodesk Animation Player. It was most popular for DOS
until Windows Media Player and Quicktime took over the role. What's next?
Displays that follow eye movement are already under development. I'm very
positive about new technology.
The same considerations apply about visualisation of data - the "map
display" in our case. Displaying GIS data (and context sensitive
visualisation of data in general as well as interconnection of different
data types) is currently moving from "static" to "dynamic" and (my personal
view - again) this will play a very important role in the (near?) future.
Worldwind is a very promising attempt and i am sure you will hear more from
this software soon. It is the forst of its kind that is free to use and has
an open interface enabling everyone to fill in whatever content you want to
see (you can already view hundrets of different datasets with the software).
So - try to be a little more positive and keep looking forward ;-)
Best regards
Bernhard
> --- Urspr?ngliche Nachricht ---
> Von: yuval levy <#removed#>
> Call me picky. I want it browser based. I want it
> accessible to the millions of browsers around the
> world. Possibly within an existing plug in such as
> Java or QuickTime. Not a 180MB downloadable stand
> alone application.
>
> I find the current state of affair for panoramas
> viewing technology very sad. There are plenty of good
> technologies out there, but none of them properly
> supported nor ubiquitous and the most popular
> dependent on 15MB+ downloads (Java and QuickTime).
>
> QuickTime is on all Macs but on few PCs where the user
> typically has to install it himself. It is
> increasingly censored at the firewall level of large
> corporations who think their employees should not
> waste time on entertainment (and QuickTime is mainly
> an entertainment technology).
>
> Java used to be more ubiquitous but since Microsoft
> feuded with Sun it is no longer included with Windows
> XP (starting form SP1 if I recall correctly). It has
> inferior rendering technology than QuickTime but is
> available on more platforms, though with some daunting
> limitations such as the 59MB memory in Opera and on
> the Mac. To Java's advantage many corporations have
> java based business applications, making it available
> there where QuickTime is censored, so the two
> technologies are kind of complementary.
>
> But what I wished for is a "gracious degradation". A
> native plug-in that is no more than 500k to load and
> that runs on most platforms and can access the most
> popular file formats (equirect, cubefaces, etc.). This
> native plug-in combined with server side capability
> identification to degrade graciously and display the
> pano in the next best available technology (quicktime
> or java) if the plug in can't be installed (admin
> rights and other problems).
>
> Sorry for this rant, probably off-topic. I'm out to
> the driving range now, hitting balls to relax.
>
> Yuv