proj-imim:
Wanted: fancy transitions
Joshua Eskin 2000-May-12 20:54:16
I think the missing piece of the puzzle in terms of providing a complete
virtual tour experience is graceful transitions between panos. Right now,
zoom transitions can be done if two panos were taken within sight of each
other: zooming along the line connecting the two scenes and cutting over to
a matching view from the nearby pano. This is pretty convincing in
practice, but zoom transitions would be smoother if it were possible to fade
between one pano and another.
Even more useful would be a window transition. Imagine clicking on a door.
The door opens revealing a view shot in the room behind it. Then the
foreground pano zooms in on the door until it flies out of view, leaving us
with the pano shot from the adjoining room.
Both these transitions (and whole class of others, analagous to the effects
a video editor provides) could be made to work if PTViewer provides two pano
buffers. Only one pano at a time needs to be under active control from user
or script. The inactive pano can be a frozen window, used as a static
background until control is transfered to it. Aside from the neat effects
possible, just having a linked pano preloaded and ready for the transition
would make for a much more satisfying user experience.
I imagine this would be a pretty big job for Helmut to implement. But, it
may be better to figure out a whole dual-buffer system than to work on fixes
to make "simple" pano reloading go smoothly. What do you think, Helmut and
gang?
=Josh
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Joshua D. Eskin, Ph.D. Panoptic Vision, Longmont, CO
303-485-9800 www.panopticvision.com