Using O3D for Panoramas

Al Hart

O3D is a 3D web technology created and promoted by Google.

O3D is an open-source web API for creating rich, interactive 3D applications in the browser. This API is shared at an early stage as part of a conversation with the broader developer community about establishing an open web standard for 3D graphics.

We have been experimenting with doing things with O3D - such as exporting SketchUp models to Collada format and loading them in O3D (we keep finding bugs in that process - but will continue working on it)

One O3D experimenter came up with the idea of mapping a 360 degree panoramic image to the inside of a sphere and then viewing the sphere from the center. This has some possibilities. (He build his sphere wrong - and messed up the image mapping at the very top and bottom - but the rest of it works pretty well. We think we can fix that problem)

Here is an O3D panorama based on one of Boothy's images.

http://www.renderplus.com/pano3d/pano_from_o3d.html

If you want to try this with your own panoramic images, you can add the name of a file to the end of this URL

To find images to test, try a google search for: panorama equirectangular

For instance, I found this panoramic image on the web.

http://www.algarve-photo.com/contax/wp-content/gallery/07_07_panofaro/pano_catedral_do_faro_01.jpg

If you add "?file=" and the address of this image to the link above, to get

http://www.renderplus.com/pano3d/pano_from_o3d.html?file=http://www.algarve-photo.com/contax/wp-content/gallery/07_07_panofaro/pano_catedral_do_faro_01.jpg

Then the URL will load your image onto the sphere and view it.

(Click on this link ato view the panorama)
http://www.renderplus.com/pano3d/pano_from_o3d.html?file=http://www.algarve-photo.com/contax/wp-content/gallery/07_07_panofaro/pano_catedral_do_faro_01.jpg

Note: there seems to be a maximum pixel width of about 2,200 for images which can be processed this way. Also, this only works with full 360 degree equi-rectangular panoramic images.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

What is nice about this is that you do not have to purchase any additional software to view the Panoramic images.---

Like most things on the web, this URL will probably soon be overused. Don't use it to publish panoramas on your own web site. Instead, contact us and we will tell you how to get the files, etc. you need to put on your web server.

Aerilius

It could maybe be done also without ANY plugins. Modern browsers support the <canvas> object. On this page, the programmers made 3d-models with javascript and canvas:
http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/canvas3dtexture_0.2/

It would be interesting to use the earth model with a panorama image and a point of view from the center.

But I think O3D has much better performance because of hardware acceleration.

Al Hart

Did you try the O3D. I forgot when I made this post that O3D required a plugin.

Al

@aerilius said:

It could maybe be done also without ANY plugins. Modern browsers support the <canvas> object. On this page, the programmers made 3d-models with javascript and canvas:
http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/canvas3dtexture_0.2/

It would be interesting to use the earth model with a panorama image and a point of view from the center.

But I think O3D has much better performance because of hardware acceleration.

DavidBoulder

Tried this link on Mac using Safari with the plugin installed.
http://www.renderplus.com/pano3d/pano_from_o3d.html

Is this a known bug?

Looking at sample on O3D site it also doesn't work. Maybe I'll try Firefox on Mac?
http://o3d.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/simpleviewer/simpleviewer.html

I do a lot of panoramic work, there are plenty of free panoramic options there to view panoramas, as well as to create them. But It appears that O3D also does other things.

Al Hart

@davidboulder said:

I do a lot of panoramic work, there are plenty of free panoramic options there to view panoramas, as well as to create them. But It appears that O3D also does other things.

Can you give us some hints on good ways to go from equi-rectangular panoramas to web page display?

O3D could do some other things. But I'm not sure what would be useful for a Panorama - while you are looking at an image pasted to the inside of a sphere. Perhaps adding hot spots to link to things? (An, of course, the ability to put a page on your site which will display panoramas directly from the .JPG or .PNG. Do any of the other solution let you pass an image to a single web page for display?)

We keep looking at 03D just in case it every catches on or does something good. You would think it would work properly on the Mac browser.

If you get the O3D to work, try using the "?file=" mentioned in the first thread of the post to view one of your own panoramas and send us the link if it works well.

Are you creating Panorama images from SketchUp?