EXPLORE DR RILEY'S MOUTH
What do your teeth see?
by Marco Trezzini
John Riley is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of South Carolina Upstate. John's interest in photographic VR began when he wanted to make object movies for a CD-ROM based physics lab manual he was writing. Working with QTVRAS from Apple to make the object movies piqued his curiosity about the panoramic side of VR. Before long, he was seriously infected with the VR virus and everything that turned made him think of object movies and panoramas.Which brings us to this rather strange panorama of his teeth. During a routine visit to his dentist, John had a panoramic X-ray for the first time. Watching the X-ray machine rotating about his head, John's first thought was: "I bet I can make this into a cool QuickTime VR!" It wasn't too hard to convince his dentist, Dr. Joe Lever, to give him a copy of the film. After scanning it into his computer and doing some minor retouching, John thinks he came up with a unique viewpoint, where it seems you are inside his mouth, looking outwards with X-ray vision. 
click here to enter Dr. Riley's mouthJohn has used panoramic and object VR in a number of his academic projects over the years, including documentation of a pre-Colombian archaeological site and a collection of 43 panoramas and 17 object movies done for the National Museum of Costa Rica. With the encouragement of his wife (Elena Mendez, also a physicist), John started his own VR consulting business, 4Pi-VR Media Solutions. 4Pi specializes in both panoramic VR and object spin movies. The 4Pi studio features a Kaidan C-60 object rig capable of shooting objects up to 400 lbs and several feet and diameter, as well as portable Kaidan rigs to use on-site with clients (as with the National Museum of Costa Rica.) 4Pi also creates interactive titles on CD, DVD and for kiosks.
Links:
4Pi-VR Media Solutions
Email: jriley at uscupstate.edu
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