Did you know? iPhone Panoramas

Nothing revolutionary here, but did you know you can use your Panoweaver stitched 2:1 Equirectangular and display them on the Apple iPhone?

Well, thanks to PangeaVR you can do this very easily. Simply download the PangeaVR app from iTunes app center for FREE and install on your iPhone.

Now you have the viewer all you have to do is upload the Equirectangular panorama image sized to 2048x1024 (600kb) to your server and then type in the address via the PangeaVR app on your iPhone.
I.E: http://www.yoursite.com/iphone/mypano.jpg and away you go.

Go one step further by writing some very simple XML and you can create a list of panos with auto-rotate, text, thumbnail, GPS that PangeaVR reads. Once done you simply enter the address to the .xml file.
I.E: http://www.yoursite.com/iphone/mypanos.xml and select from the list what pano you would like to view.

The "Pro" version PangeaVR Pro ($12.99 USD) allows you to download the panoramas for local viewing at anytime (no Internet connection required).

I mention this because A) I recently bought an iPhone (for no other reason than to display panoramas) and B) Being able to show clients, potential clients, family, friends and just people who need a visual to get a grasp on what a "panographer" is (because sometimes it's not what they think!).

Regards, Smooth

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Just a brief message to point out a new (free) application dedicated to VR on Iphone : ArounderTouch although I did not have time to evaluate it

thierry

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For info, the topic has been discussed a few times before :
the current applications to display vr on iphone are pangea and cubeworld :

2009
http://easypano.com/forum/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=1&TopicID=4208&SearchPagePosition=1&search=pangea&searchMode=allwords&searchIn=Topic&forum=0&searchSort=dateDESC&ReturnPage=Search

2008
http://easypano.com/forum/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=6&TopicID=4591&ReturnPage=Search&PagePosition=0&ThreadPage=2

http://easypano.com/forum/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=6&TopicID=4170&SearchPagePosition=1&search=iphone&searchMode=anywords&searchIn=Thread&forum=0&searchSort=dateDESC&ReturnPage=Search

http://easypano.com/forum/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=1&TopicID=4169&SearchPagePosition=1&search=iphone&searchMode=allwords&searchIn=Thread&forum=0&searchSort=dateDESC&ReturnPage=Search

thierry

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and of course http://www.moblvr.com/

Lets just say I have download and installed all these apps and only PangeaVR is worth having in my opinion and it could use some updating.

Because "unless" you know the URL you can't simply download the panoramas for local use. You also must be prepared to download the panographers "whole" collection not just the one or two panoramas of interest.

Some countries limit data (Both WiFi and Wap) and charge by the Kilobyte downloaded. Phone plans are very limited (Wap) here in Australia and very expensive for data. 25mb = $20.00 AUD for (Wap). It is reported daily that kids receive bills for thousands of dollars because they don't understand how it all works. Exceed your approved mounthy limit and you are looking at 0.35 cents per kb (yes - kb, not mb) without warning.

It should also be noted once downloaded for local view you lose all the "extra" xml info and all you get is the panorama image to play back via PangeaVR Pro. So it will not auto-rotate, no GPS info, No text, no FOV limitations and no thumbnail.

Brian at Pangea should put a little more into this Pro version of the app.

Regards, Smooth

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In my opinion (for budget consideration since mobile broadband usage is usually limited everywhere in the world) only pangea pro and cubeworld applications are worth considering since they allow to store panos on the iphone and therefore are not internet dependent.



thierry

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James, Good thought about the iPhone

We went the other direction.  We bought a small 8 inch [20cm] screen Acer Netbook that uses XP.  It is wireless and connects easily to local Wi-Fi hotspots (or your local area network wireless router).

Agreed you can not stuff it in your shirt pocket.

Price US$289. from local Walmart.

Needless to say.. the 160gb hard drive holds alot of panoramas and we downloaded free Open Office software.

OH and we also use it for GPS.  [MS Streets and Trips].  Took it with us last month to Mexico.  Took a 2 day road trip through the Yucatan.  Quite surpised that almost all the small back road villages were geo located correctly on the gps software maps.

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/s/
Dave
Forum Moderator for
EasyPano - Panoweaver
Pano2VR


Visit 360texas.com

Unfortunetally, until Apple will not bring full Flash support on iPhone, we'll not make money from it. The big issue for us is to provide verstatily to customers, to let them use these virtual tours we create in many ways - iphone, bufon, tufon... all smartphones.

Anyway, we'll go on!

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The flash version for the current Iphone (Apple stated it wanted a decent working version) might be possible through apps. Adobe already said it was working to make flash app available without requiring flash. It is going to be possible in the next release of Adobe CS5 :
link to the post

The other related question would be to have TW tour on iphone which would require a self contained swf which would be possible to integrate in flash. Even though it's too soon to know how swf could be integrated and how CS5 would produce iphone apps.

So there still would be the question (on the TW side) to have
- self contained swf and
- the possibility to automatically reduce the size of the pano to iphone size (to reduce loading time and broadband usage)

it would be nice though to have better options than the current iphone apps such as PangeaVR, Cubeworld or Arounder which display simple panos

One has to take into consideration too that most of the applications on the Iphone (but for some database ones) require beside the apple SDK, the knowledge of Objective C Cocoa programming language.


thierry

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Good to know Thierry.
Do you play around with the Arounder App?

Personally for me it's not about "others" viewing my panoramas on their iphone but more a way of me showing them what I do in a casual sense from a device I'm likely to have on me in most settings. From there we move to a computer.

Still, if people wish to view panoramas on a small phone it is OK.

Regards, Smooth

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The iPhone allows you to surf from everywhere (if covered).

I've always my iPhone with me, NOT my laptop ;-)

Of course iPhone's screen resolution may have a bad impact, but you are ALWAYS able to show something, for sure in the Real Estate World !

Having an "iPhone" deticated version would be nice.

Reagrds,

Dominique

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Nikon D300s - Nikor 10.5 - (PW7 Pro + TW6 Pro) - W7 Ultim - DELL Prceision M6400 (Quad Core - 8GB - 2x160GB-SSD)

The iphone app can be complementary ; some apps were really successfull and with the coming tablet/ Iphone v4, it's going to gain popularity.

It could be
- a way to let more people know about one's work or a way to show them directly the panos. As for social network facebook and twitter are now used often, there could be some apps for the virtual world as well.
- a way to get a personnalised application for one's own use in order to show the work to a potential customer

Concerning Arounder app :
It goes a bit beyond pangea VR since one can choose points of interest / nearby panos but it 's more a gallery/showcase rather than a tool. It's more aiming at becoming or trying to become an unversal app.A lot of companies are trying to become the "google" equivalent for panos and Arounder is trying as well (like 360cities.net, or like the former Ipix but the competition is there and I am not quite sure there will be a winner soon.

The very important feature is the ability to load the pano or tour(when available) inside the iphone or ipod touch since loading panos can be very expensive on the phone bill side. Once it's stored it can used without requiring a connection.

Currently there is no tour possible but it should rather be done in an app in which you can load what you want rather than counting on companies which would reference your work (you get more freedom)

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