New stitcher engine

Dr Derch the mathematician who created the Panotools has released a new stitcher engine. It is faster but still under development. I have done a few stitches and find that tiffs have issues. It may not quite be ready for prime time but I expect once it is tuned a bit I will start using it more. Lots of new features that I don’t quite understand how to use and of course little documentation. He has integrated the video chipset GPU commands into the stitcher engine, at least for brand specific cards. Whey even test it then? When it is tuned it should reduce the stitch time for some of my 10 and 20 gig stitches by fifty percent.
Prof. Dr. H. Dersch from my perspective is one of the key personalities in the development of VR or immersive imaging. His release of Panotools into the public domain allowed PTGui and PTassembler to advance the VR worlds. His continued work in these fields will push the development of VR imaging one of my favorite methods of image creation.
Most people don’t have a standard stitch of 36 frames as I do, MF cameras now demand even more processing power with 500 meg prints my current standard (oh how I love my Epson 9880) so the ability to handle huge data sets in limited ram for me is very cool.
http://webuser.hs-furtwangen.de/~dersch/
Have a look at his site, his motion Panoramas have me thinking about all kinds of ideas. Everyone has people they look up to, Dr Derch does that for me. Take care and my poor Nikon gear is feeling so lonely since all I want to shoot with is the Contax.
Mark Prins
Inanda Images

Mark Prins said:

is tuned it should reduce the stitch time for some of my 10 and 20 gig stitches by fifty percent.
Prof. Dr. H. Dersch, from my perspective is one of the key personalities in the development of VR or immersive imaging. His release of Panotools into the public domain allowed PTGui and PTassembler to advance the VR worlds. His continued work in these fields will push the development of VR imaging one of my favorite methods of image creation.

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Mark,

Thanks for the connection. Panotools is the "engine" of endless thousands of Panos and Prof. Dr. H. Dersch, is the designer and visionary we should look to with gratitude and admiration to make this possible!

His work on projections is fascinating, getting superwide views to be rectilinear by segmenting the projection.



Asher

Sorry for the massive size, I'll correct that after I've delivered some pressing work.

Note that the rectilinear projection of the central square or "Market" in the city of Marburg, causes a curved set of placement of rectilinear roof tops! In other words the picture is segmented on projected curves to hold rectilinear structures! One has to pay the price somewhere! It would be nice to dial in the balance between the two.

PTGui seems to use some of these ideas and, of course, the inheritance of the ideas is from Prof. Dr. Dersch!

Funny that the 360 degree version seems normal to me!

Asher

Good news that Helmut Dersch is back again - in terms of public appearance - after these unpleasant years with that fuzzy ipix patent claims.

If Mark is pointing to PanoToolsNG:
Helmut Dersch announced that he will solve several incompatibility issues regarding
PTGui so we can expect that the next PTStitcherNG beta will run much
better when using PTGui as frontend app.

Michael Fontana said:

Good news that Helmut Dersch is back again - in terms of public appearance - after these unpleasant years with that fuzzy ipix patent claims.

If Mark is pointing to PanoToolsNG:
Helmut Dersch announced that he will solve several incompatibility issues regarding
PTGui so we can expect that the next PTStitcherNG beta will run much
better when using PTGui as frontend app.

Click to expand...

So Michael,

What does this mean for the uninitiated?

Asher

Long story, Asher, but I try to make it understandable:

Prof. Dersch, as a math professor was writing the math base, algorythms and resolving the remapping questions on a codebase whithout a GUI, called PT (PanoTool)

Joost (from PTGui) added the GUI - now you understand better the name of PTGUI.

Ipix persecuted Dersch and other software developers, they were using relatively open software tools with standard license agreements (non-ipix). Therefore Prof. Dersch withdrew his software from the net in order to evade a lawsuit which iPIX was, according to his knowledge, preparing in the US.

Look what wiki says:

"PIX (IPIX Corporation.) was an imaging technology company headquartered in Reston, Virginia. One of its products was visual technology allowing the stitching of panoramic images into 360°x 180° field of view video and photography. The company's stock was traded on NASDAQ (IPIXQ).

Their .ipx format was for a time a widely used virtual image type for hotel and real estate websites. 'IPIX Interactive Studio', could create IPIX's proprietary format, QuickTime Cubic VR images, Equirectangular and Cylindrical Projections as JPEGs that could be viewed with Helmut Dersch's freeware Java PTViewer, Shockwave w3d files, VRML files and X3D files. Two plug-ins are available that can create images in the RealViz format and iSeeMedia's PhotoVista format.

iPiX licensing method was as follows. The proprietary iPix software "iPix Wizard" could seam any number of fisheyes (or retouched fisheyes) into a .ipx and would only allow viewing of the image for quality control purposes. When the user wanted to save the .ipx file he or she would "spend" an iPix key. These keys could be purchased from the iPix store for $25 each, or less if purchased in bulk. Resellers could purchase these keys and offer iPix services while charging more than $25 per sold .ipx picture. Minds-Eye-View, the company that bought what remained of iPix continued this licensing method and continues to use the Ipix name.

IPIX patented its Omniview motionless camera orientation system, and has claimed that this patent covered techniques for creating 360-degree images using two fish-eye photographs. It pursued an active policy of filing patent lawsuits against any company or individual that developed similar technologies (Helmut Dersch and the company Infinite Pictures were the most notable examples) and also lawsuits against photographers using software it considered to be infringing its patents. The company was widely criticized for these lawsuits [1]. Among the arguments against the patent claims were the existence of prior art, and that these lawsuits have acted to put a damper on the development of interactive immersive image technologies. It was also argued that some of their claims are too broad, suggesting that any geometric remapping of a fisheye image is their invention [2]. In the end it turned out that IPIX itself was in violation of a prior patent held by Pictosphere, and in court attempted to use the same defense that had been used against them in the past. They lost the suit [3].

On July 31, 2006, IPIX filed for bankruptcy after posting a 3.8 million dollar loss [4] for the first part of 2006. They had posted a $347 million loss in the tech crash in 2001.

Before going bankrupt iPix was developing a technology called i-movies or vPix, streaming video in 360 degrees again without moving cameras. The technology would have theoretically allowed an infitite number of viewers to "move" their own camera and viewing space in a live televised event. The technology was not further developed.

On January 19, 2007, it auctioned off a block of 28 patents for $3.6 million, to an anonymous bidder which later revealed itself to be Sony [5].

On March 29, 2007 Minds-Eye-View won the auction for the remaining iPIX assets, including the trademark name, software and websites. Quotes by MEV president Ford Oxaal suggest the iPIX brand and products will continue to be available.

Several alternate technologies exist to create and display Virtual Reality images, including QuickTime VR and Java-based applets."

panotool NG= PanoTools Next Generation

The reappearance of Mr. Dersch is a positive sign for the panorama community. He develops mainly on win, but he will release PTStitcherNG for all platforms, and he points out:

"In the longer run I will add photometric corrections (global per image, and
vignetting); This will make PTStitcherNG more suitable for hdr-stuff (note that
16bit in & output, plus raw-input via plugins is supported already). Input via
video-streams to stitch movies in (almost)realtime is another point on the
agenda."

Thanks for the background. You clarified what I suspected. I'm glad that in the medical field patents on DNA genes are being challenged. But let's not discuss that here, anyone!!

I find stitching a wonderful way of bypassing technical challenges of representing wide angle views in different ways as the mind really is not prepared for such visions! funny that we have learned to accept spherical projections and now rectilinear possibilities seem strange!

Asher

I think that one thing is missed with Michael's background is that when Dr Dersch was told to stop development of Panorama Tools he released the material into the public domain. That one act is what in my mind drove the VR imaging world. From there the NONA stitcher engine was developed by Joost? while there were nearly a dozen different versions of the dll file. Max Lyons built the PTassembler front end GUI and built one of the best fusion programs as a function of the assembler. I really do look forward to seeing what the next generation of stitcher engine will perform as my work explores where I can create VR images. Take care all.

Mark Prins
Inanda Images

Mark Prins said:

I really do look forward to seeing what the next generation of stitcher engine will perform as my work explores where I can create VR images.

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Hi Mark,

Indeed, progress is still being made. It's good having Prof. Helmut Dersch back in the game.

I'm also exploring VR image generation, and in fact today received my 15mm fisheye lens for relatively fast aquisition. I can use longer focal lengths for higher resolution stuff. PTAssembler needed a little help in figuring out the type of fisheye, and I'm calibrating things for the best entrance pupil settings on my RRS pano setup. I'll have to do some more tests for the best aperture/distance settings, but I'm gradually honing in on the optimal settings.

Cheers,
Bart

Mark, I'm aware of several pano libs - with or whithout limitations in the FOV, but I didn't wanted to make it more complex; on the macside there was Kevin only, for a good while.

Michael Fontana said:

Mark, I'm aware of several pano libs

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Mike,

What is a "lib" and what features are helpful to us that are unique and not found in Panotools GUI's and programs like autopano Pro and PTgui

Asher

The "lib" is the library, so in this context here the panotools library = °dll file° in Marks words.

It contains the data, Mr. Dersch gave to open source - the math base, algorythms and resolving the remapping questions on a codebase - whithout GUI/frontend in the old days, it's been sometimes downloaded separatly - but today it's hidden in the programm package of PTGui, per example.

APP hasn't Helmut Dersch's work as a base, therefore it's pretty different in some of its base architecture, while kekus has been using the panotool's lib as a core element for several apps, like PTMac, or the Panotool lens correction plugins, named Lensfix.