Forum

Topic: Web Site and Forum / spherical panos

Tve, despite Angelko’s comment, the web site does support spherical panos in the sense that you can view any gigapan as a spherical image provided the gigapan has been geocoded – just click on the the “View in Google Earth” link. It occurs to me that you may already know this and you were asking about facilities such as those offered by Jason’s site. On the other hand, it seems to me that few people seem to know about the Google Earth option so I thought it worth mentioning.

Of course you/your clients/fans need to have Google Earth installed and it may not be appropriate to geocode an image because it does not have a geolocation per se (or you don’t want to disclose the location) which is where Jason’s site scores. Jason’s site also uses the very wonderful (imo) KRPano.

FWIW I think KRPano (or equivalent) is definitely the way to go if gigapan.com want to catch new people.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Explore Scores and Other Views

Jason, I think your idea about allowing some users to use the gigapan servers directly is an excellent one. Can you contact me privately please? I have tried what I thought was your email address and private messaging but not received a reply.

Glen, perhaps you are not aware of this, but when gigapan.com was the academic project gigapan.org, the people running the project explicitly said “we like that you have these ideas but don’t want to host them” which is why some of us started doing our own thing. (In defence of gigapan.org, their reasoning was that resources were limited and they wanted to spend them on their own ideas. And they provided the tools for people to do their own thing.)

I imagine Jason’s remark about the top ten most prolific gigapanners (or uploaders to gigapan.com at any rate) was made partly in jest, but it points to a serious issue viz the number of people that actually have any interest in gigapans. It occurs to me that the reason why there is apparently little use of Jason’s excellent tools and the stuff I have written, and the reason why gigapan.com don’t dedicate more resources to problems like explore scores is that, sadly, there simply aren’t many people who are that interested in what we do.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Explore Scores and Other Views

I sincerely hope Gigapan is listening to Kilgore and Jason’s comments. It’s very telling when people outside the organization are writing their own code to improve the viewer’s experience. Gigapan should have you guys as consultants!
I am not savvy in computer programming, but it seems to me it would be simple to weight the explore code according to a handful of inputs: number of views, time spent per view, amount of zoom used per view, diversity of links to the page, gigapan size, diversity of snapshot authors, whether it has been geolocated, etc. Even if it defaulted back to the old algorithm which at least worked that would be step in the right direction.
Or maybe Gigapan could survey their members to see what they want included in the explore score.
Hope the explore score stalemate does not drag too much longer…

Topic: General Gigapanning / How to embed your viewer on your Zenfolio page

1. Once you have uploaded your gigapan(s) to GigaPan.com, on the detail page you will see under your image a link that say embed. When you click that a window will open with an iframe code that you copy and paste

2. Go to your Zenfolio account page in edit mode

3. On the left side, there are four tabs:
a. Photographs
b. Client Communication
c. Website Pages
d. Files & Resources

4.Click on the Website pages, then click the Custom Pages link

5. Once on the Custom Pages, click Create New

6. This will open up the Edit Custom Page section, where you can title the page, add META Descriptions and embed the code you copied in Step 1.
a. In the box below META Description, you will see the Content box. In this box you can see </>Embed.
b. Click on </>Embeds and a new window will pop up
c. Copy and paste the code from Step 1 in this box and click Insert Code in the bottom right of the window.
d. You can embed as many GigaPan images as you want to on each custom page.
e. Once you have the GigaPan image(s) that you want then you can either click Save and Preview or Save and Close.

7. We recommend that you Save and Preview the first time to make sure you did it correct.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Explore Scores and Other Views

Hello Kilgore661

I wholeheartedly agree that having lots of ways to find the Gigapans is paramount. I really like your tools like the random viewer and map view.

That Gigapan does not have the functionality that they offer even working is really sad.

What would be ally nice is if there could be a ‘sandbox’, where we could fix the problems and develop the features needed while hosting the fixes on the Gigapan servers (as there are limitations to using our own servers to do the task due to security restrictions in the JavaScript engines and Flash, there are major ‘same origin’ policy issues.)

If there could be a way to open up the Gigapan servers to some user generated code, and allow users to try it out, I believe that us users could do all the needed work easily and Gigapan could benefit tremendously with the user generated upgrades. How about letting some interested power users have subdirectories on the server to host some php code and read access to the main database and write access to our own tables. We could come up with our own viewing and recommendation logic and users could try it out. I would happily sign non-disclosure agreement as well as allow for circuit breakers to prevent any unruly code from hogging resources.

For example, I have experimental JavaScript code that can make three dimensional anaglyph Gigapans on the fly within the users browser, but I can not release it into the wild due to same origin policy issues for JavaScript to access the image tile data to create the anaglyph tinting in the browser. Currently I have to have an intermediary proxy server do the tile tinting so that there is not cross origin data issues, but this method is very server intensive so does not scale, whereas if it we were just supplying code to a users browser, it would be no server load at all and would scale perfectly.

The next huge issue is mobile. I personally no longer wish to use a desktop computer to look at Gigapans, I far prefer the Retina screen of an IPad or the new Kindle or Nook, but none of these devices are properly supported by Gigapan. There is an iOS Gigapan ap, but it does not support retina resolution and Flash on Android is terrible in regards to pinch to zoom not existing in browser Flash. That is why I created http://www.3d-360.com/ipan – Strangely it is hardly used by anyone and without anyone providing feedback as to why not or suggestions.

Concerning the Explore Score, I do not want explore score to go away, I just want there to not be a nonfunctional system.

I do find it curious how few people have anything to say on these forums however, and also curious why the number of Gigapans posted does not grow a bit faster, there seems to be a fair bit of user fatigue and churn. The top ten most prolific Gigapanners still have half the pixels posted. (Ron…;).

I truly encourage everyone to post thoughts and ideas more on these forums, experiment more, and to comment and tag each others Gigapans more. The site seems to heavy on pixels, lite on human interaction. I am going outside now to look at the real world, go skiing and scuba diving and hang out with friends and laugh lots and donate free time to worthy environmental causes like the prevention of shark finning.

Cheers

Jason

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Zoom Limit

I agree with the 1:1 marker and I’d also like a means of embedding gigapans in which it is not possible to go beyond 1:1.

I disagree with the idea that going beyond 1:1 doesn’t give you more ‘information’. Logically, yes, I know what you mean but in practice, when you are looking at details that are not pin-sharp for whatever reason, sometimes you are able to see more/better by going beyond 1:1. I don’t know exactly why this is true but it is a fact which is why the scientists included it. My guess is that by creating pixels that aren’t there it is easier for your brain to see what could be there. For example, suppose your scene contained an area that went from pure white on the left to pure black on the right. Suppose further that in the gigapan this area was only represented by two pixels: a pure white one next to a pure black one. Now suppose you are looking at the image at 1:1. It is likely that you won’t have any idea what the two pixels represent, but if you look at the gigapan at 3:1 (say) then the software will interpolate and show you a smooth transition from white to black so the interpolation has correctly reconstructed the original scene. Of course the problem is that the computer can’t know that interpolating the pixel data is the right thing to do. For example, the scene may have contained a pure white area and a pure black area seperated by a picture of Leonard Cohen. In this case interpolation will not reconstruct Leonard so the interpolation is wrong and useless. However, in general interpolation gets it “right enough” to warrant including it as a useful tool.

I do completely agree however that there are times when you really, really don’t want users to be able to go beyond 1:1.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / map view

Try this http://www.kilgore.org.uk/cgi-bin/surfing/surfe…

It isn’t perfect and it is a long time since I wrote it, but it seems to be working still.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Explore Score No More?

I agree with Jason’s idea for a road map and with the general idea that the number of ways of viewing gigapans needs to be increased.

I strongly disagree with the idea of removing explore scores for a number of reasons. The first is that it is not the responsibility of other people to tell me how I may and may not view gigapans. The second is that the primary concept behind gigapans was, originally, that they show you unusually large amounts of detail so it seems obvious™ that there should be some measure of how much detail a gigapan contains. The explore score is intended to be such a measure. How good a measure it is is arguable but I wouldn’t like to see it removed without it being replaced by something equivalent or better. The third reason is that I want the number of ways we can view or search for gigapans to be increased not reduced.

With regard to the assertion that explore scores can be manipulated, this certainly used to be the case but it is not so true now. The reason for this is that the way explore scores is calculated was changed some time ago so that it does not include hit count. Of course there is nothing to stop someone asking all their friends to visit a gigapan and leave a few comments.

What I suspect may be the general thrust of those arguing for explore scores to be removed is that the scores are used to generate one of the two primary ways of viewing gigapans so explore scores are very significant in determining which gigapans get looked at. If there were more ways of viewing gigapans then this would not be an issue – a point I have made elsewhere.

I do agree that there is a fundamental problem with any system of ranking based on interaction by users whether it be by explore score or hit count or whatever, viz once a gigapan has got into the charts it stays there and nothing else can get in. This used to be very true of the old explore score system when Hanauma Bay was permantently number one and the top ten hardly changed at all. The response of gigapan.org (as it was then) was to change the way explore scores were calculated when what they should have done imo is to leave the explore score alone, come up with some new, additional ways of scoring and to promote those ways as much as “view by explore score”.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Explore Scores and Other Views

This post was prompted by reading a post elsewhere from someone who wanted explore scores to be removed. I’d like to argue for an increase in the range of viewing options not a reduction. For a long time I have thought that there are lots of different ways of viewing gigapans – of which “view by explore score” is one – but we have only ever had a limited range of options.

I note that we now have galleries and gigapan “detail pages” now have three thumbnails alongside the main image to encourage viewers to look at other gigapans, but when I consider the large number of ways gigapans could be displayed I think the current set of choices is weak, really weak. (That some of the ways we do have don’t even work is imo pathetic; i.e. worthy of disdain and very sad.) Some of you will know I have made some experimental tools for viewing gigapans. My favourite is one that shows the user a complete screenful of randomly-chosen images. I like this because I get to see images that I wouldn’t have chosen to look at but are in fact, now that they have been put in front of me, astonishing or beautiful or just plain crazy or … I also like the fact that the tool shows me lots of gigapans at once.

I’m wondering how other people would like to be able to choose to display gigapans. Maybe if there is enough support for one particular idea, gigapan.com might implement it.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / The Problem with Gigapan.com

I was going to contribute to the thread on explore scores not working but realised my concerns were broader than that.

My guess is that the problem with ESs is an instance of the general problem that there are too few engineers allocated to the web site. What can you do about that? I understand that the management at gigapan.com has changed recently which may be a good thing but we have no idea what they are up to. As Jason says, a road map sounds like a good idea. I’m not sure that it would be useful to us per se imo, but it would be at least reassuring. Of course, a road map may reveal that their plans are not at all what we want. I also suspect that the management will not want to publish a road map because it will give their thinking away to competitors. Perhaps a road map for bug-fixing would be acceptable to them. IIRC there was something like this at one time, but it was not maintained. I asked about this and was told that it was an idea that they wanted to pursue but … resources were a problem.

I recently sent some polite, constructive criticism on a specific technical issue to a senior manager. I also said that as a long-time user and advocate of gigapan technology, I had to describe their inability to deliver as “pathetic”. I received a very encouraging reply and I understand conversations were had at a senior level. Perhaps this is the way forward i.e. send polite, passionate messages to Support for the attention of management.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Public Galleries . . . Aren't. Bonus: Featured GigaPans?

I just spent an unholy number of hours creating group galleries here: http://gigapan.com/groups/100

Adding went fine, and Support gave me a workaround for the bug that’s hiding the edit button. But I have a shiny new problem:

My galleries, which are supposed to be public, aren’t. The group is listed as public and open. I can get to the group page just fine if I’m logged out, and then to the galleries page, but if I click on a gallery, I’m told I’m not authorized to view it and asked to log in.

We need these galleries to be viewable by anyone, whether they have an account or not. Help?

Also, I’m trying to feature some panos on the group homepage. Clicking the button to do so brings up four copies each of three panos. Going to the next page seems to give me a list of every possible GigaPan. What gives?

Topic: General Gigapanning / Sports arena gigapan

Hi,

The Gigapan does not have any special mode for not cutting people apart. You will have the best luck by having significant overlap between images (40-50%) so you can go back in to the image post stitch and clean up the broken body parts with a good likelyhood of having a complete torso in one of the images. I like to use Ptgui stitcher for this as it has an excellent mode of exporting projected images as layers in place, so that you can easily go and piece the bodies back together in photoshop by painting visibility of the layers. It’s actually pretty fun to do. Ptgui has a tutorial on their website explaining how to do this.

I like to capture a scene with the Gigapan robot and then switch to a free motion gimble head from the exact same vantage spot and shoot the ‘action’ by hand, then stitch this action into the scene in the appropriate place, such as my X-games images http://www.3d-360.com/gigapan/?id=77777 and http://www.3d-360.com/gigapan/?id=15884

Also, limiting the number of shots by either having a lower gigapixel size or using a higher megapixel camera (ie 36 mp Nikon D800) helps reduce cut up bodies.

Good luck!

Topic: General Gigapanning / Gaps between vertical rows

What camera are you using? I think the GigaPan is expecting the ratio of length to height of individual pictures is 1:1.5. If your camera shots a squarer aspect ratio you might not have enough horizontal overlap. The solution would be to re-do the setup, allowing more overlap.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Explore Score No More?

The explore score worked again for a while, but the last posted Gigapan with an explore score is this one http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/110244, posted July 24th. The 5000+ Gigapans posted since then all show up on the bottom of the heap of any search or ordering.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Explore Score No More?

David Pivin wrote in the first post: “It appears that this feature hasn’t been working recently. The last panorama posted with a non-zero score was on November 17, 2011.”
Today is the 18th Nov 2012, that means the explore score has been having problems now for more than a whole year!

Topic: Embedding / Embedding Sample Code -- fullscreen, snapshots, large views

Hey Joe, is there any way to make it start in fullscreen mode?

Topic: General Gigapanning / Sports arena gigapan

Hi, I’m considering taking a gigapan of a large gym sporting event like volleyball or basketball. How do I set up the gigapan so that the players aren’t cut off, or in multiple locations?

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Edit galleries?

Hey, everyone.

I need to edit some galleries I created—include a “cover,” edit the tags and descriptions, that sort of thing—and I can’t figure out how. Anyone out there know?

Topic: General Gigapanning / Bubble of Gigapan

It seems the question asked is similar to one of my issues. I am a new owner of a GigaPan Epic Pro, when I mount it on my tripod that has been leveled (nivelated?), the GigaPan isn’t level (nivelated?). When I adjust it so the bubble is centered, rotating the GigaPan causes the bubble to be no longer centered.

Is this normal, the first few GigaPan’s I’ve taken seem to be okay (although tilted from left to right, cropping and editing helps).

Any help from others would be useful.

Thanks

Topic: General Gigapanning / Low angle tripod for Pro.

Hello All:
I’m looking for recommendations for the shortest possible mount for the GigaPanEpic Pro. The Manfrotto’s I use can get me to just about 16" but with a huge spread of legs that is often too wide. I need someting compact and close to the ground (more or less sitting on the ground with an option of up to 6" above it) with good stability. If my Gorillapod was just a touch steadier it would be just about perfect.

Thanks in advance.

joel*
photography@CREATiVENESS.com

Topic: Stitch / how to uninstall GigaPan Stitch

I installed the trial version of GigaPan Stitch and when I clicked to open the program my computer froze. How do I uninstall this program because it does not appear in add/remove programs? I am using XP Pro 32 bit. Thank you.

Bonnie

Topic: Digital Cameras on Gigapan / Canon SX50....

Jason,

Agree on the IQ of D800. But with a 400mm and Epic Pro – I can’t imagine i like to carry this combi around. I am not a hard core gigapanner.. Maybe, later, who knows…

Mosley

Read your feedback and the related. SX50 now has the raw output. Will that resolve the prob. highlighted by you.

I am deciding between this SX50 or the 100-300 for my m43. But generally, I do not use such longer FL, if I will to get the 100-300, it would have ended up only for gigapan – so I must as well get a ‘delicated’ superzoom, and will be more compact too!

Topic: Gigapan Mechanism / Epic Pro Help Required

Hi all! The solution is use more small lenses. I use one 50mm 1.4f and problem solved.
For the big lenses, i have one 70-200 and a nikkor 2E III and is a problem to take upper pictures.

There is any solution to this?

Sorry for my bad english =P

Topic: General Gigapanning / Bubble of Gigapan

Excelent. When will be fixed?

Thanks

Topic: General Gigapanning / Best type of head to use with Gigapan

I use Manfrotto 808RC4 3-Way Standard Head with Quick Release Plate 410PL and is, for me, the best!

http://www.amazon.com/Manfrotto-808RC4-3-Way-St…

Regards!