[thelist] quicktime 360 degree pictures filesize

Peter Lowe pgl at instinct.org
Mon Aug 4 18:36:54 CDT 2003


On Aug 04, Chris W. Parker wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I'm planning to make 360 degree rotational pictures/movies* for all
> (most anyway) of the products on our site but before I do that I'd like
> to get an idea of how large the files are going to be.
> 
> I'm thinking the average size will be approximately 200-300 x 200-300.
> That is to say, 200-300 pixels wide by 200-300 pixels tall. I'm also
> thinking 12-16 frames per picture. (Is that too few?)
> 
> Also assuming about 20-25% compression. 100% being the ugliest picture
> and 0% being the prettiest (or most handsome if you prefer) picture.
> 
> I did a little googling on the subject but came up dry.
> 
> Can someone give me an idea of about how big a file like that would be?
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Chris.
> 
> * I don't know if that is the correct term, but these are not the
> panoramic pictures where it looks like you're standing in the center of
> a room and looking around. Instead it's the kind of picture you'd see in
> a used car commercial where the car is on a platform spinning around so
> that you can see all the sides without moving.

We use a piece of software called Pixaround that's pretty good. You take
a series of pictures, upload them to your machine, and it stiches them
together into a 360 (or 270, or whatever) degree landscape. It doesn't
allow much movement up or down when viewing the image at 100% height,
but you can set it so that it's already zoomed in a bit at the start,
allowing a bit of up and down movement. You can also create hotspots
that link to another 3D environment or URL.

It works as a Java applet and seems to be pretty reliable - it even
worked in Opera 6 for me (albeit very slowly). The only problem I know
of is that Windows XP users have to have a recent version of Microsoft's
JVM to view them properly.

Here's an example of how we've used it:

	http://prague.tv/venues/detail.php?id=331

You can find out more about the software here:

	http://www.pixaround.com/

which includes a directory of sites using Pixaround:

	http://www.pixaround.com/showcase/

cheers,

Peter

-- 
The Czech Republic: Home of the world's finest beer.
Litres drunk by Czechs so far this year: 970,926,818.63

 - http://prague.tv/toys/beer/


More information about the thelist mailing list