I found a trial version of Autodesk Stitcher and spent some time today experimenting with Quicktime VR style panoramic images. Nice piece of software that does a great job of automatically stitching and rendering various panoramic formats. Here’s a nice on of Hoobinoo Valley on my Sunset Myst sim. This one started out as about 100 snapshots taken from the same spot.

Hoobinoo Valley Quicktime VR
( Click and drag to pan around. CTRL or SHIFT to zoom in or out )

Quicktime VR was actually one of the first things that I experimented with on the web. Both were new technologies in the early 90s and I used them for several projects while I was in art school. Virtual gallery tours featuring recreations of historic sculptures and paintings. Tiny, postage stamp sized gallery tours, anyways. :)

Here’s a spherical pano rendering of the same scene. Love the way this distorts and stretches the shapes.

I’ll be making a few more of these over the next few days. Any suggestions for spots that I should capture?

Frequent visitors will probably have noticed that my posts have been few and far between lately. Sorry ’bout that. I’ve been very busy with several projects in-world and have had less energy to devote to other tasks. Here are a few links and other things that I have been meaning to mention:

We had an opening celebration at my Sunset Myst sim for Snowy Hoobinoo’s out-of-this-world floral creations. A great time was had by all. Snowy handed out some free, flowery wings that made us all look like a mobile flower garden. Lots of cool avs and fun people in attendance. You can see pictures of the event on Snowy’ Flickr stream, Tim Deschanel’s, and mine too.

Speaking of pictures…Koinup is a great way to share your SL pics. It sort of like Flickr, but just for snapshots and videos from virtual worlds. I especially like how they gather together all the shots from specific sims into one group. They also track the ‘coolest’ images and places. It’s a great way to find new places to visit in-world. My Koinup page.

The SLurl site has been upgraded. The map loads so much quicker now and the images include more detail. Whatever they did it sure is a nice improvement.

LL reports on the growth of Second Life in 2008 – and of course this brings out hundreds of angry comments from folks who are stilled sore about the OpenSpace mess. Zee Linden is in amongst the mob, taking things in stride and engaging in  honest and informative conversations. Way to go Zee! I’m psyched that SL has grown so much and am very optimisitic about the future of our virtual world.

My friend Thoth Jantzen has expanded upon his Kaleidoscopium idea and created the Disorientation Station. :)  His virtual, immersive kaliedoscopes turn any YouTube video into a hypnotic sensory overload. Very cool, but be careful if you have work to do – time flies when you’re inside these things :) Check it out in-world.

Looking for something wonderful to see in SL? Check out Lem Skall’s photostream on Fickr. Not only does he find some really fabulous builds, he captures them with lush, rich colors and a great eye for composition. He usually includes the SURL so you can go see the site in person, too. Really beautiful work.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

If you ever hear from a friend, “The graphics in Second Life are so ugly.”, just point them at Lem’s photos and they will have no choice but to change their mind.

It’s atmospheric. It’s evocative. It’s enigmatic. It’s steampunky. It’s 20 gallons of awesome in a rusty, 5 gallon bucket. It’s Immersiva. Go there now.

While you’re there make sure that you poke around and look for hidden content, scattered poems, music boxes and other little surprises. Bryn has also provided a notecard that you can use to configure your Windlight settings for an extra bit of atmospheric goodness.

Dusan Writer points us to Hublog where Alf Eaton has posted some high resolution maps of the entire SL grid. Very spiffy.