Juzer Burhani

Panorama of Mombasa by Juzer Burhani on CleVR.com

I am so Happy to hear that Yesterday Panoramio added photos up to ID 10760000 to Google Earth, that means around 750,000 new photos improving the experience in Google Earth. That also means that out of my 2 previously mentioned Panoramas, First one (id: 10410584) is now viewable in Google Earth. The next update will be around August 10th and will include photos reviewed before July 27th which may include my second one too.

Microsoft has come out with Deep Zoom, a method that uses the Silverlight 2 plugin for navigating around large online images. Deep Zoom uses the same technique as that used in online maps and virtual globes — showing a hierarchy of ever-more detailed imagery tiles as you zoom in. Hard Rock Café has an early example of the technology in action.

And to prove the point about the similarity with maps, Deep Earth uses Microsoft’s own map tiles to create a Deep Zoom version of Virtual Earth. What’s the difference between the two? Virtual Earth doesn’t really zoom smoothly but does wrap around, Deep Zoom zooms but doesn’t wrap around (at least not in the examples given).

The London-based Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) has had a similar tool for a while, except that this is a Java application that uses the Google Maps API: The Google Maps Image Cutter. It’s main advantage over Deep Zoom is that this application lets you make your own instances of zoomable gigapixel images. (I haven’t yet seen a tool that lets you create and publish your own Silverlight-powered gigapixel imagery.) [Update: There is a tool for creating Deep Zoom images, see comments.] The main disadvantage is that it doesn’t zoom smoothly — instead, you have to step between discrete zoom levels. And once you’ve zoomed smoothly, there isn’t really any going back.

It makes a lot of sense to publish gigapixel images to the web with a technology that only downloads the bits you’re actually zooming in on. (Zoomify is another example.) But what about 360-degree panorama images? These wrap around, just like an imagery dataset for a virtual globe. Here too, CASA has come to the rescue, with PhotoOverlay Creator, which produces KML that lets you explore a 360-degree panorama in Google Earth. This java app also uses a pyramidal hierarchy of tiles.

There are several ways of publishing panorama images on the web using Flash, such as Flash Panorama Player and Lucid. But such tools have lacked support for the piecemeal loading of high-resolution panoramas. One solution has been to become a member of and upload your panoramas to a site like Gigapan which uses server-side processing to deliver up the imagery piecemeal. But for DIY types, there is now also a relatively new Flash-based panorama publisher on the market that does provide multi-resolution tiling: KRPano. Expect to see a lot more development in this space.

So now we have scalable online viewers for both Euclidian and elliptic large imagery datasets. But where is the viewer for hyperbolic imagery? :-)

These are my first two panoramic images i have created recently. Both are hosted at Google Panoramio.
The first one is shot from the terrace of Al Jamea tus Saifiyah - Arabic Academy.
This panorama is also posted on Gigapan images.


The second one is shot from the terrace of Khaimat ar Riyazat building.


comments are welcome.
Related Posts :
Google Panoramio Features Look Around
Surat skyline from Al Jamea tus Saifiyah

Dramatic view of Surat city skyline from the rooftop of Al Jamea tus Saifiyah. Starting from al Masjid al Moazzam and Mazaar e Saifee covering the southern side of Surat. You can see that Najmi Masjid's minara is popping out and finally Revolving Hotel is seen in the rear.
Photos shot by myself and Panorama created in Adobe Photoshop.
you are viewing this panorama with panorama viewer from Gigapan.
you can also download this photo here.
comments are welcome as this is my first panorama.