Landis Bennett, one of the World Wide Panorama organizers and a Summit attendee, found SPi-V to be “an extremely powerful panorama viewer that I believe will revolutionize the field of VR Photography. The smooth panning and gentle stops really amaze with this viewer. But a smooth viewing of a panorama isn't the only thing, Aldo continues to come up with new and innovative things to do with SPi-V.”

Another Summit attendee, Greg Downing, believes that “[SPi-V] is the most exciting thing to happen in panoramic delivery since QuickTime 5 (the first version that would playback cubic panoramas). It holds tremendous potential in the way we deliver our media. The new capabilities are the kind of things that I have wanted to be able to do for years. Just the demos [Hoeben] has created so far are worth switching to this delivery media, and I am sure there will be more stunning examples soon as more artists dig into it.”

Hoeben’s goal with the SPi-V Engine is to continually add elements that will enhance the realistic viewing experience of panoramas. One of these elements is the soft-braking effect. Rather than halting the pano abruptly when the user stops the movement, SPi-V continues the movement a moment longer, mimicking the effect of human movement and consequently making the viewing experience more natural. Hoeben’s keen aesthetic sensibility is apparent in the soft, subtle toolbar and branding, clever logo, and hard-to-miss hotspots circled in bright red (no more rooting about for the hotspot icon). "Of course hotspots are only red circles if you want them to be. Everything in SPi-V can be customized, so if you want green throbbing squares as hotspots, you can," Hoben adds.

One of SPi-V’s most anticipated features is its ability to easily layer different images, leading to a higher dynamic range. For example, you can layer two panos with background and foreground exposures to easily create one pano that is properly exposed depending on where the viewer is looking. This technique, dubbed Adaptive Dynamic Range or ADR, “is something that will immediately be used to improve the ‘wow-factor’ that we photographers get when we show off our work,” Bennett predicts. The dynamic range is the contrast ratio between the brightest and darkest parts of a scene. Cameras have a limited dynamic range compared to the human eye, and this shortcoming is particularly apparent in panoramic images, where there is often a dramatic difference in lighting from one area of the panorama to another. While a High Dynamic Range image increases the dynamic range by combining multiple images in various exposures, the ADR approach uses two differently exposed panoramas and mixes them to achieve the appropriate exposure for the current view. The SPi-V engine uses 3D hardware acceleration to mix the two exposures in real-time.

Hoeben: “To determine this correct exposure, a high contrast grayscale version of the panorama is included with the SPi-V file. One to nine rays, depending on the type of metering you specify, are cast within this grayscale map, determining the local light-value. The nine values are weighted to simulate a camera's matrix metering. To further simulate the continuous adaptation of the camera's exposure, the light value is dampened slightly. The resulting lighting value is used to mix the two panoramas before the current view is rendered.” The ADR approach results in a panorama showing details in both light and dark areas, and with good contrast throughout. It also involves less work. An ADR pano only requires two exposures for each position, versus five to seven exposures for an HDR panorama. (See examples of the ADR effect with Greg Downing’s Petra and Andras L. Frenyo’s Covered Bridge.)

Greg Downing, who has done significant work with HDRi comments: “I think that the ADR feature is a much more elegant way of representing the dynamic range of a scene than compositing bright and dark exposures together into one image. It really makes our photography much more dynamic.”

The technique isn't just useful for high contrast scenes though. It can also be used to add realtime focal blurring to a panoramic scene. Focal blur adds realism to a scene by limiting the depth of field of the virtual camera; areas in the scene get in and out of focus as the viewer pans past parts of the images that are near or far away. In another variation an invisible rectangle is added to a pano that creates a slow zoom when the cursor is within the area, lending greater creative power to the panographer who wants to gently guide the viewers’ attention to specific areas of the scene.

The demonstration packing the biggest wallop is Hoeben’s panoramic background with correctly lit real-time 3d graphics: an object VR of the Space Needle within a background panorama of Seattle. Pan around the Space Needle while simultaneously panning the background. Apart from the cool effect, it is incredibly realistic; moreover, the object VR within the pano adds a whole new layer of interest and detail. Although the animation and 3d object features are as yet unavailable in the licensable version, they should be included in future versions.

Hoeben compares SPi-Vs more advanced features with a diorama: think of a child’s project converting the inside of a shoebox into a 3D scene with a peephole for viewing.( Hoeben explains: “You have different layers of graphic content, in the case of a diorama adding depth to your scene (with dramatic colored lighting coming from the colored paper lid you’d put on top). In SPi-V you can also have these different layers on pieces of cardboard affixed invisibly not to the shoebox, but to the panoramic scene. But in SPi-V these elements needn't be static. You can move them around the scene, change their transparency, etc, but also have your audience interact with them. And with this basic concept you can do a lot of really exciting stuff.”

One of the big advantages of SPi-V is the use of XML, which makes it easier to tweak compression settings, image dimension vs. performance and doesn’t require exporting files. Indeed, the benefit of database connectivity alone is significant. XML also makes it easier to incorporate making content for SPi-V into one’s workflow and, importantly, it makes content more “future-proof”.

“Let’s face it, SPi-V is not going to be around forever, and neither is QuickTime,” notes Hoeben. “Image formats like JPEG, GIF and PNG are likely to survive a lot longer. Long after the SPi-V engine has gone, you can retrieve the graphic content and repurpose it with another technology. By using an XML format and separate graphics files, SPi-V itself isn't bound to Shockwave either. If at one time Macromedia decides to include a real 3D engine in Flash, or something better comes along, I - or somebody else - can easily create a new viewer technology that reads SPi-V XML files and uses the new viewer to display them. At least lots easier than if I had chosen to use a Shockwave specific file format.”

But what about the high number of auxiliary files XML generates; will users find this a hindrance? Hoeben: “Has it been a hindrance to HTML? I don't really think so … I think the benefits for now outweigh the disadvantages. And think of it this way; it will be trickier for content thieves to get a whole tour from your site, until of course someone creates a SPi-V file downloader, but the SPi-V market is too much of a niche currently for that to happen. If it becomes an issue, I (or somebody else) will come up with a solution.”

The more complicated question is whether panographers will be able to manage basic XML for their interactive photo visualizations as well as they have with HTML coding for QuickTime authoring tools. Hoeben agrees: “That's a tricky one. … Being a one-man show (and a part-time one-man show at that) I decided to focus my development efforts on the viewer first. Which means there are currently no WYSIWYG drag and drop authoring tools. Tours have to be edited in a text editor.”

Of course, XML is much like HTML, and many people learned to write HTML in a text editor before there were WYSIWYG tools for editing HTML. See something cool on a site? View the source and copy the bits you like: Learning by example. “But are photographers part of the group that learned by example like this?” Hoeben asks. “In all honesty, I don't think so. I will first have to depend on the experimenting group. Even so, feedback from photographers who attended some of my sessions at the Summit in Sedona was positive overall. People came up to me saying 'hey, I think I can do that!' ”

Shockwave
A possible protest from potential SPi-V Engine users, who already worry about the QuickTime install base, is that Shockwave’s base will be even smaller. While this is true, it may only be negligible, if a recent survey is accurate. NPD Online (September 2004) found that Macromedia Shockwave Player adoption has reached 55% of Internet viewers, versus 59.2% for QuickTime and 98.2% for the Flash Player. (The QuickTime numbers may be low according to some other estimates, such as Cliff Van Meter of quicktiming.org, who estimates QuickTime’s install base at 85%.)

What is more pertinent, however, is the increasing adoption and penetration of broadband Internet connections, which will have an impact on the production and viewing of immersive imaging. According to a recent (November 29, 2004) New York Times article, journalist Bob Tedeschi quoted a Nielsen/NetRatings survey that found 53 percent of home Internet users had high-speed connections last month and July 2004 was the first month when high-speed users eclipsed dial-up users at home. The same New York Times article makes note of retailers using 360-degree images to sell their products.

Licensing
Since SPi-V is currently no more that a viewer technology; there are no authoring tools, so Hoeben doesn’t have the option of giving away the viewer for free, but he has devised different licensing models that should meet the needs of everyone. Hoeben: “I hope people will find they are quite liberal; there are no per-click fees, no annual fees, etc. You buy a license for a certain purpose (i.e. showing content on a website, or showing content off your computer, etc), and you're good. “

Four Licenses are available:
1. Free: includes fieldOfView branding and an about box.
2. Domain (EUR 89): Playback any SPi-V content from a single website/domain.
3. File (EUR 39): Playback a single SPi-V XML file (containing any number of scenes) anywhere.
4. Machine (EUR 29): Playback any SPi-V content, online or offline, from a single computer.

New Version and Features
SPi-V 1.0 was released at the end of November and Hoeben has already updated it to 1.1, adding back support for older versions of Shockwave (making it compatible with Shockwave version 8.5 in addition to version 10.). And new SPi-V versions are in the pipeline. Directional sound is on top of his list.

[Hoeben and Greg Downing have been working on a “superzoom” feature (a variation on Hoeben’s autozoom feature) that will give the impression of enormous detail in the panorama, giving the author a chance to direct the viewer’s attention in a new way, Downing writes. “One of the problems with QuickTime’s zooming features is that most people don’t know about them,” so a lot of the captured resolution goes unnoticed.]

What’s Next for SPi-V?
Hoeben: “Animated images and flash based textures are next, but full panoramic video will not be very easy to add. That will have to wait until at least SPi-V 2.0, which I think will also include support for huge panoramic images. But who knows, SPi-V 2.0 may even be based on another technology than Shockwave. I see no alternative technology to base SPi-V on in the current web landscape, but that may be totally different in a year.”

And what about alternative delivery vehicles to SPi-V? As far as Hoeben is aware, SPi-V is the first hardware accelerated panoramic viewing engine available to a wide audience, although it is something like PTViewer: a Java applet that doesn’t run on Java, but Shockwave. In that sense there are a number of vehicles like SPi-V.

Marcromedia is aware of SPi-V, and a possible conflict seems to have been averted since the release of Director MX 2004, when the former rather strict Director end user license changed into one more similar to that of Flash. In the meantime, Macromedia’s legal department is reviewing SPi-V and Hoeben believes he is “safe”.

It isn’t surprising that panographers are impressed with Hoeben’s SPi-V engine: With a smooth display, rolling stops, time lapse, focal blur, easily identified hotspots, database connectivity and the ADR features, and new elements such as animation in the near future, SPi-V is undeniably one “spiffy” panoramic delivery vehicle.

For information about the SPi-V engine, visit:
http://fieldofview.nl/spv
For more content developer information, visit the SPi-V development website:
http://fieldofview.nl/spv-dev

Related Articles:
- An Interview with Aldo Hoeben

Email: aldo[at]studiopko[dot]nl