With 3-D photos, you can place yourself on a city street, in a home for sale or in a jungle

08/31/99

By Doug Bedell / The Dallas Morning News

For more than 100 years, photographers have been sawing the world into two-dimensional images, then trying mightily to make them look 3D.

In the 1800s, they tried the stereoscope; in the 1950s, it was the View-Master. Each "revolutionary" photo-widget was embraced by Americans briefly, then tossed aside after the fad faded.

The Internet age may put the solution at hand: "Photobubbles" produced by immersive photographic image technology create the feeling of that elusive third dimension.

With new software, digital cameras and faster computer platforms, photographers are able to stitch together multiple fisheye, hemispherical and still images into pictures that viewers can move through with mouse clicks.

These 360-degree pictures allow Web page viewers to look up and down, move forward and back inside a still scene with remarkable clarity. Suddenly, the Discovery Channel (www.discovery.com) can take you to the heart of jungle darkness, CNN (cnn.com) can let you roam the space shuttle cockpit, and Microsoft's Home Advisor (homeadvisor.msn.com) can escort house hunters on living room tours of faraway properties.

Many of the techniques, pioneered with Apple's QuickTime Virtual Reality software, have been around for several years. But only now, with computer and digital camera costs in a free fall, is the potential for this photographic form coming into focus.

As the process becomes more user-friendly, proponents believe it won't be long until everyday consumers make their own panoramic snapshots.

Growing trend

"I believe immersive imaging is truly a paradigm shift in photographic technology," says David Sheehy, an Australian who has taken the plunge into commercial applications (users.bigpond.net.au/dsp). "As such, it is still very young, and there are many innovative discoveries being made as we speak."

Electronic commerce applications for this technology are enormous. Real estate firms worldwide, the tourism trade, developers of virtual shopping malls and other up-and-coming Internet ventures are all looking at 360-degree photos to enrich the Web sales experience.

As a result, patent fights and other signs of frenetic commercial activity are springing up across the globe. Some hold major ramifications for consumers.

Since the early 1990s, photographers and software engineers have been experimenting with immersive techniques. Apple's QuickTime VR, which offers only cylindrical images, was the first immersive imaging software on the market. With it, viewers can spin completely around a center point within a photograph, but they can move up and down only about 180 degrees.

As digital cameras were developed and computer processors were better able to handle the demands of immersive photography, experimentation began to produce promising results.

In 1993, a Tennessee-based company called Interactive Pictures Corp., or Ipix, patented its technique for stitching together two hemispherical, fisheye lens images to create a photobubble effect. Members of the International QuickTime VR Association regarded the move suspiciously but continued to work on their own applications, believing them superior.

However, as Ipix (www.ipix.com) gathered investors and began licensing use of its software and selling its lenses, things got ugly. The company began threatening to sue prominent rivals in VR photography on allegations they trespassed on Ipix's legally claimed territory.

In 1996, Ipix sued Infinite Pictures, a company experimenting with its own fisheye hemispherical images, and won a $1 million judgment after a three-week trial in Tennessee.

"We have absolutely no doubt we'll win on appeal," says Infinite's former head, David Ripley. "We just got nailed by a Tennessee jury."

Spreading onto the Internet

In April, the conflict broke out of courtrooms and onto the Web. An Ipix attorney sent a letter to German physics professor Helmut Dersch threatening legal action for posting an Ipix photo of the Grand Canyon on his Web site (www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/ sphere_format/Spherical.html).

Dr. Dersch and others who had labored in this field for years were incensed. The image in question was made with free tools under development years before the Ipix patent, they protested.

"Ipix is trying to enforce patents in a ridiculously broad manner that threatens to stifle the development of superior technologies if their court decisions are successful," Mr. Sheehy says.

Ed Lewis, Ipix vice president for marketing, says company attorneys are in discussions with Dr. Dersch, who re-established his Web page after a brief absence.

"Anyone with an e-mail address has a right to speak out," Mr. Lewis says. "We're not twisting anyone's arms to buy our products. We've had some victories we've won in federal court. We're going to stand up and defend our patents against those who would steal our work over the last several years."

The Ipix legal tactics, however, spawned an organized protest. Web surfers visiting sites using panoramic images are now routinely confronted with "No IPIX" banners and buttons. And the furor shows little sign of abating.

It's the price of doing business in a competitive world, Mr. Lewis says.

"When the sewing machine was invented, the seamstress union boycotted," Mr. Lewis says. "At the end of the day, we're just a technology developer. They can use our products or stay with what they had before."

On the Internet, Ipix continues to draw eyes as it enters agreements with real estate firms, automakers and other companies that are paying licensing fees ranging from $2.50 to $50 per image. It is also marketing digital camera kits, its computer software and fisheye lenses at prices from $200 to $2,000.

Clients include Hilton Hotels, Disney, Toyota, Intel, Rent.net, Coldwell Banker, Century 21, ERA, Prudential, CNN, the Chicago Tribune, MTV, Microsoft, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, ESPN, Hyatt, Honda, Discovery, Fox, NASA, Kodak and Columbia/Tri-Star.

So if Web surfers haven't yet encountered 360-degree photos, they are bound to stumble on one soon.

Previous efforts have always required plug-in programs for browsers to view the panoramic shots. But that daunting obstacle has been overcome by the Java programming language, available in Internet Explorer and Netscape versions 3.0 and higher.

"This is just a better picture than a flat photo," Mr. Lewis says.

"It was really just waiting for three things to come along - the Internet, PC improvements and more and more digital cameras," he says. "Everyday we're finding out new applications.

"It's a fun business to be in right now."

Future of immersive video

The growth of digital camera sales is expected to widen use of panoramic photography even further.

Recent InfoTrend research shows North Americans spent more than $900 million last year to buy 1.3 million digital cameras priced at $1,500 or less. By 2002, as prices fall with competition, InfoTrend predicts 4.7 million cameras will be sold for more than $2.2 billion.

Experts say Internet use of immersive techniques will grow even more sophisticated. In fact, Ipix, iMove (www.smoothmove.com) and several other firms are already working on interactive video techniques that will allow 360-degree tours inside digital video clips delivered on high-speed Net connections.

Mr. Ripley, who left Infinite for iMove, says his company will also be ready with a new technique that will allow Web page visitors to walk around, under and over objects to view them from multiple angles.

When that is perfected, Mr. Ripley says, a person searching out condos under construction in Chicago will be able to take a virtual tour through the neighborhood, navigate with his mouse up to a finished rendition of the condo complex and walk through the doors to view mock-ups of the interior.

"Now," Mr. Ripley says, "you're completely inside the computer-generated complex. You can walk through and look around and go to each window and see the real view.

"The fat pipes [for high-speed access] to the Internet are coming, and panoramic movies need that because they've got a pretty hefty data rate," he says. "That's when we see the homerun for this industry with e-commerce and interactive TV.

"When Joe Sixpack gets that big pipe, the applications will be extraordinary."

Send e-mail for staff writer Doug Bedell to dbedell@dallasnews.com.