Andras Frenyo:
It was great to see everyone, as always. Savannah is quite nice with its porches, balconies and squares full of luscious trees with Spanish moss hangin' from them. It also has a waterfront and beaches nearby . . . the people are super friendly, and expectedly slooow.

360 Precision's Matt Rogers was there, we spent a lot of time together, but - to me - the most exciting thing was the introduction of videowarp (by the same guys who gave us photowarp). Their software corrects the perspective of 360 footage of those donut frames on the fly - to several possible projections that can be switched in between by single clicks. They also will be adding live streaming and hotspot abilities . . .

One always learns something from Jook Leung

Although they may not make it into commercially available software anytime soon, Microsoft has done some amazing stuff with stitching, video and animation.

It was fun to hold in hand Everett Brown's Globus Scope with its retro look and ingenious film based panoramic camera design.

Although Kaidan didn't have it ready in time to show at the summit, I am excited to have gotten on their beta tester list of an upcoming new spherical head

I missed Hans Nyberg’s presentation, but managed to catch up with him on his Google ad secrets over pizza and beer; there's a lot of money to be made through those - I had no idea!

The new vrworx (v2.6) now supports many much wider lenses, and although it still doesn't generate cubic movies, it's worth importing those created elsewhere, because its interface to create multimedia tours is elegant and simple.

As an added bonus, Pat St. Clair and Kevin O'Connor brought some high-end printers we could print our panoramas on - Ian Wood (England) and I were up until 4am one night printing out our images in beautiful colors . . .

Andras Frenyo’s panos from the Summit in Savannah

Pat St. Clair:
The fourth annual VR Summit was held last week in Savannah, GA. Once again it was a smallish gathering yet once again I rate it as tops among all the conferences I have ever attended. I cannot think of one person there (attendee or instructor) who did NOT bring home something amazing to incorporate into his or her VR workflow.

This is by no means a comprehensive listing of what when on, but here are some of the things attendees soaked up:

The keynote by Matt Uyttendaele of Microsoft Research was nothing short of fabulous! The audience broke into spontaneous applause several times throughout his presentation about the amazing tools being worked on in the Microsoft Research labs. There is some really great stuff coming down the road from Microsoft!

Those of us involved with the Red Lion Hotel photography earlier this year (Dennis Biela, Jook Leung, Phil Weston, Tim Petros and me, Pat St. Clair) shared liberally from our hard learned "guerilla photography" techniques we incorporated in our workflow to make dealing with HDR situations predictable and controllable, and Jook expanded on that in his "Cool Tools" seminar.

Michael Rondinelli of 360º One VR introduced his VideoWarp product which enables interactive 360º video . . . very cool!

Everyone gained from the innumerable small impromptu discussions that were held at all hours where attendees and instructors shared workflow, ideas and tools. For example, Jen (from Malaysia) and I figured out how to do full cubic panoramas using VR Worx 2.6 and a third party tool . . . how cool is that!

Full workflows incorporating fisheye capture were in abundance and clearly demonstrated . . . for me, moving to one of these workflows during this past year cut my panoramic post-production time by about 60% and with fewer stitching errors to boot.

We had three lighting classes . . . basic, advanced and a half day seminar covering both panos and objects.

THE Hans Nyberg seemed to be everywhere at once creating amazing panoramas under austere lighting conditions and sharing with anyone who asked how to do the same.

There were also sessions on Marketing, advanced web techniques, authoring for handhelds, advanced color management, Photoshop CS2 tips, advanced FLASH, the perennial VR-101, fine art printing, free print output compliments of HP and Kodak, demonstrations of Realviz Stitcher, iPix Interactive Studio, VR Worx 2.6, and 3D Studio Max with Kay Christy, photorealistic 3D VR, how to photograph in 3D, an open computer lab, full access to the best suppliers of VR Software and Hardware, and all the one-on-one time you could stay awake for with many of the best VR Professionals in the world. On an optional day five, there was a shooting field trip through the historical district of Savannah where you could practice new techniques and work with new equipment under the guidance of those more experienced in that particular workflow than yourself.

I'm sure I've forgotten some things, but I have to say this format for a conference really works! A typical response when I'd ask someone if they were finding their investment in this week valuable was an enthusiastic, " . . . every minute of every day"! (Actually, that's an exact quote).

I've given considerable thought to the question of what makes this conference so effective each year and I've decided it comes down to this . . . every person at the VR Summit is invested in being there . . . Dennis Biela puts blood, sweat and tears into it, the instructors work for free, the attendees come from five continents and go through a lot to be there, etc. Every person there is invested in the experience and is highly motivated to learn and to share. Nobody is there just taking up a seat.

I am personally excited that the buzz is that next year it will be in Europe! That's not set in stone yet, but it seems close, and it will be the Europeans' turn to have easy access to this resource.

Jook Leung:
I'll remember Matt Uyttendaele of Microsoft Research keynote presentation the most, it was a watershed experience. Seeing the golden nuggets from Microsoft's lab in Matt's presentation made our eyes glaze over, wishing we could get our hands on these VR tools now. Photographic Virtual Reality was envisioned at Apple with the Quicktime development team and given proof of concept with Apple's MPW and QTVR Authoring Studio but now sadly orphaned.

Thanks also to Kevin O'Connor and Pat St. Clair who got HP and Kodak sponsors to deliver printers so that many of us got to print out our panos.

Jook Leung's panoramas from the Savannah Summit

Hans Nyberg
Hans Nyberg shot a couple handheld panos (after a few drinks) at Pinky's Bar in Savannah featuring Patrick Cheatham, Andras Frenyo, Kay Christy, and Ian and Gordon hiding in the corner: Welcome to Pinky's Bar, Savannah

Hans Nyberg's panos from the Summit in Savannah

Patrick Cheatham:
Patrick Cheatham gave four presentations in Savannah. View Cheatham's Summit in Savannah pics.