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Open Source Flash Panorama Viewer based on Papervision 3D

The latest news, source and examples are at the PanoSalado Blog.

We still love using Flash Panorama Player -- who doesn't? -- but we're also tinkerers... The growing prevalence of 360° panoramas being delivered on news media Web sites and a few other places have surprised us by being (for the most part) sat atop of the Papervision 3D engine.

Patrick credits Gary O'Brien and his 'blog "The Panoramist" for giving him his first taste of Papervision-based panoramas... It was a post and a link to a NYT article that got Patrick scratching his head late at night one night. Wink Zephyr credits the Papervision team and their demo panorama with helping him to waste hours tinkering.

Papervision 3D is an open source 3D engine for the Flash platform; it's "written and maintained by a small core team, and contributed to by its ever-growing community".

Well, Papervision is extremely cool -- if not for the faint of heart or those who are GUI-bound and unfamiliar with ActionScript and other flavors of things that ultimately require you to ditch your liberal arts major and poke the math pencil in your eye -- and hugely useful for those of us delivering 360° panoramas in an increasingly QTVR-less world.

The PV3D engine is also hugely extensible, and that's where the meat of this posting is... What Zephyr Renner has done in great part regarding the PanoSalado wrapper, and Patrick has done to a lesser extent regarding adding user-friendly visual interface, is to extend (and even rework parts of) the PV3D engine (see source and examples below). EyeCandy is good and all, but let's make something useful...

We're providing the source itself of our engine extension to the community at large which might want to roll their own panoramas and deliver them via Flash. It is our hope that others will be interested and interested enough to co-carry the torch and aid in making a PV3D extension set specifically for delivering rich interactive photographic 360° VR panoramas to the public.

The PanoSalado class(es) which sit on top of the PV3D classes (and various COLLADA and tweening classes) are submitted then for your consternation, approval and tinkering. Smile We submit PanoSalado as Open Source -- see the licensing at PanoSalado's googlecode home. Easy! Other classes which are included may have their own copyrights and usage setups, but we're sticking to including open source things AFAWK. RTFM is a good thing. Smile

Please leave comments here, or contact us.

Cheers!

Patrick & Zephyr

PS: if enough pano-minded folks are interested, but askeered enough of ActionScript Wink, let us know that too -- we could be coerced into putting some sort of front end (read: GUI) on things.

PS 2: comments regarding shimmer, wavy lines and/or movement/inertia will be ignored. Smile these are things which can be controlled via the scripts, though with the usual possible performance costs, associated with any of the Flash panorama viewers.

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Note: In their current state, the classes and code are both Flash IDE and Flex friendly... So you can fire up your favorite text editor, command line interface, or Flash itself.

Note also that there's a lot of fat that could be cut from the set of classes -- we aren't using everything PV3D has to offer (nor do we need to for 360° VR photography panoramas), but we provide it for completeness.

All source code and example downloads for PanoSalado have been moved to http://panosalado.googlecode.com .

A live example is available at: http://www.cheathamlane.net/index.php?section=open%20source
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The Papervision folks
(http://wiki.papervision3d.org/index.php?title=Getting_Started_FAQ#What_i...)

TweenLite

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Brilliant work guys, we've

Brilliant work guys, we've been considering 'when' we'll need to go down this road. It's great to see someone blaze that trail.

Thanks, Aaron Spence.

Great stuff! You made my

Great stuff! You made my prediction come true Smile

http://lists.apple.com/archives/quicktime-vr/2007/Mar/msg00173.html

more on
http://panospace.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/flash-panoramas-the-more-the-m...

Very cool guys. I see a big

Very cool guys. I see a big rendering improvement from the previous version. I think we are finally approaching a main stream platform with the quality VR-Photography deserves and open this media up to the masses...you guys rock, big time!
Cheers, Milko

Thanks everybody! Glad to

Thanks everybody! Glad to see some interested folks... Smile

I updated the source file download to include example cube faces.

See the link in the main post above.

Cheers,

Patrick

Wow! Kicks the pants off

Wow! Kicks the pants off other flash viewers out there!

A gui would be great - easier and better workflow...

Fantastic work!

Thanks Rick! -- I've updated

Thanks Rick!

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I've updated the source files and links above. Also updated are the licensing terms -- the whole kit and kaboodle is now offered under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

Cheers,

Patrick

Probably should try to

Probably should try to explain one particular point of how this viewer works: There is no XML file (unless some intrepid user modifies it to use one). Instead, everything is set up in the text .as file. And then it can be compiled with the free Adobe Flex SDK, or with Adobe Flash CS3 into a .swf. There are a number of benefits to doing this; primary amongst them is the huge flexibility the it can give to a user to improve, expand, and modify the basic template. (Whereas, with an XML file and an abstract .swf engine, the possibilities of what a user can do with the pano viewer are limited by what can be done in the XML file, or what can be done within the constraints of a plugin). Another way of saying all of this is that a graphical user interface is an ideal way to assemble the text .as source file for a "normal" virtual tour delivered with this pano viewer, since there doesn't need to be an XML file mediating the GUI and the engine. And there is huge flexibility and power for the intrepid user who is willing to dig into the actual code where no GUI has yet gone, and make revolutionary panoramic presentations.

Zephyr, do you know the open

Zephyr, do you know the open source software haXe to compile swf files: http://haxe.org/intro

  • By Thomas (not verified) at 04/02/2008 - 21:24
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Looks stunning. I've got to

Looks stunning. I've got to grips with FPP's XML, but I think this would remain firmly out of reach of many users without a GUI. Bring it on!

Being a programmer by trade

Being a programmer by trade and a panographer on the weekends, I'd love to get involved in this. Is there some kind of doc to get up to speed on the use of this? Thanks

Hi Marlon, Currently Patrick

Hi Marlon,

Currently Patrick or I are the documentation, so for everyone who is looking for documentation or information on how to dive in, drop one of us an email and we will answer your questions.

Zephyr

This is a real looks... but

This is a real looks... but all persistently forget one big defect - Absence CURSOR POINTERS
I much says to this subj... and many developers took this as true notion for VR Panoramic Projection (Thomas - Pano2VR, Denis FPP)... for simple users gravely to understand - hiway (roads) without Pointers for trips

Good concept with Cursor Poiners (Like as QTVR) http://flashpanoramas.com/player/examples/distorted2.html

Need this adds! Thnx

Hi there: I believe this is

Hi there:

I believe this is already part of the next update to the library files...

Smile

This is my PNG source

This is my PNG source (Cursor pointers - liked QTVR)

If need...
http://humanoid.devalvr.com/media/c_pointers_png32b.zip

regards

  • By hum@no.id (not verified) at 05/18/2008 - 00:10
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Cool, thanks! I think

Cool, thanks!

I think Zephyr had some in the works too, so maybe we can make an option...

Cheers,

Patrick

ps: will DevalVR ever be available for Mac? Just curious... Smile

[quote]will DevalVR ever be

Quote:

will DevalVR ever be available for Mac?

Hi,

Yes...This in works plan... maybe soon

fiero, promised, but did not says dev.time

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I impressions wait... for Cursor Pointers into yours good project:))))

DevalVR for Mac, Custom cursors for Papervision panos

Hey there:

I anxiously await for fiero to find the time. Smile

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Zephyr has practically rewritten our "PanoSalado" Papervision based panorama viewer. I expect to see a new post here about it soon. Once we get that up, we'll incorporate the custom cursors Z has come up with plus yours.

Cheers,