Jo wrote:

My inquiry is can Autopano support this work ?

It can. But you´re shooting the wrong way. You need to know the very basics of shooting "linear panoramas". Some ideas: http://www.photozz.com/fizz/18706463.aspx

1) constant distance to the object.
2) regular pattern - which means constant distance between the shots.
3) many (!) shots using short distance between them.
4) identical height and FOV. ALWAYS look right-angled (flat) to the object.
5) avoid any perspective in the shots.
6) always identical time/aperture/WB settings.

Of course it all depends on what you want to achieve.

best, Klaus

Artisan S. wrote:

But Jo I would (differences aside) conclude that we both agree on the fact that APG has a limited capacity in stitching MVP's......It is used for connecting airiel shots.....not for this extreme work....

I don´t agree with that at all.

Klaus

Last edited by klausesser (2012-08-31 20:12:06)

Hi Jo
When I'm looking at this microsoft street slide, it's clear what they are doing:
They shot spherical (360º) panoramas on the street every 2 m.
This you can do also with Autopano.
Then they combine together the various panoramas for a tour, where you can jump forward or back.
This you can realize with Panotour in a similar way.

But now, they combine all this spherical panoramas (2600 for 4km streets!) with a special software to multi-perspective slides.
As you can see when they drag in the street, it will be stitched together in realtime (RT).
It cuts tiles from every spherical pano (RT), corrects the distortion (RT) and then stitches the tiles together (RT).
(Read all technical stuff here: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/ … _slide.pdf)

This is (least at the moment ) not possible with Autopano or Panotour.
And this will not be possible for mortals for the next few years (or months )
First it's a gigantic task (and far too expensive) to capture and create 2600 panoramas for only 4 km street.
You need high end imaging technology (like google streetview) or several weeks (and a lot of traffic policemen) to capture these panos.
Then you need high end computers (also far too expensive, direct from microsoft or so) to create them.
For this demo in the video they have a really fast machine (cluster?) where they capture this presentation.
I couldn't find any live and realtime demo in the web.
The presentation on the handy is a fake, it's also a video that is running. The controlling man is not perfectly sync!

To stitch similar panoramas, first you need planar images.
So when you capture them with a compact camera, you should first correct the lens distortion of every image e.g. with photoshop.
But with compact cameras this is not easy. A lot of distortion and no exact values for the (rubber-) lens.
If you followed the recommendations by Klaus,  you also can try to stitch them together with Autopano.

Jo wrote:

Most panorama software is good  for single view point.  If I understand correctly, does someone request it (linear panorama) for the new feature to Kolor ?

let´s make clear what we´re talking about: "Linear Stitching" can very well be done with AutopanoGiga - and i guess with other panorama-applications too.
It basically depends on your knowledge how to use it.

Usually it needs to set a very long focal-length to have the stitcher assume a very long distance and therefore NOT assuming any perspective and parallaxe - opposite to shooting around the NPP.

I did run such a linear stitching by setting 1000mm as focal-length in APG - worked very well.

BUT: you need to care for the correct shooting parameters - which i stated before. Not following the correct shooting-parameters results in stitch-errors and/or very much post-production in Photoshop.

You can´t expect it to work easily and without efforts.

That has nothing to do with the application you use. Google´s results are very mediocre - and they must be because of the masses they have to process related to the speed of shooting they need to do. Besides: they don´t need better quality - you can´t compare what they do with high-quality panoramas . . it´s not Googles main concern

best, Klaus