Technical Information
Below are the diagrams used to plan the photography for this project. Each red number indicates the position of a panoramic node.
About This Project
In June of 2000 two alumni from the Wroxton College Class of Spring, 1968 met at the Abbey to begin the primary photography for this fund-raising project. During a week of long hours with fine weather each day, Howard Goldbaum, a professor at The University of Nevada, Reno, assisted by Angela Amoroso, a TV producer from Oslo, Norway acquired more than 4,000 high-resolution digital images. These pictures would later be assembled on computers to provide the QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) panoramic scenes.
QTVR panoramic scenes, using technology from Apple Computer, provide a preferred process for the creation of immersive cross-platform virtual reality photographic environments. Other methods, commonly used for real estate marketing on the web, use but two fish-eye (extreme wide-angle) pictures blended together.
Apple's QTVR cubic (or spherical) panoramas, can produce more highly-detailed panoramas, allowiing a greater degree of image magnification on the computer screen. QTVR also permits high-resolution panoramic prints to be made.
The process involves the following steps:
- Using a special indexing tripod head (Kaidan's QuickPan Spherical), pictures are taken in a 360° circle (columns) and in successive angles (rows) from the ceiling to the floor. Multiple exposures are made in areas of highly contrasting lighting (e.g. walls with windows). We used a Minolta RD-175 digital camera with an 18mm lens.
- Image processing software (Adobe Photoshop) is used to optimize image brightness and color balance throughout the pictures from each environment, combining different exposures where required. All work was completed using an Apple Macintosh G4 dual-processor computer.
- Other software (RealViz Stitcher) is used to seamlessly assemble the pictures into a single image combining all the pictures from the 360° sphere. Using our equipment, this involved 82 different pictures for each spherical environment. The resulting image, the sphere projected into a 2 X 1 rectangle, is called "equirectangular." The typical full-resolution stitched spherical image in the Wroxton project resulted in a 200 MB file (uncompressed). Alternately, a set of six squares (faces of a cube) may be created.
- The equirectangular image (or the six cube faces) are then combined (using Apple's MakeCubicVR) into a navigable QTVR panoramic movie which allows the user to pan the angle of view left or right, up or down, and to zoom in or out.
- The individual QTVR panoramic movies ("nodes") are then assembled into a multi-node QTVR scene using Macromedia Director to designate "hotspots" linking the nodes together and provide the interface structure.
If you have been unable to locate all of the resources in the web site by navigating through the VR panoramas, or if you prefer nonlinear navigation, you can access any location by clicking on its title below. Use your browser's "back" button to return to this page.
Preview of South Wing and Basement
Preview of Library and Other Rooms
We would like to thank Nicholas D.J. Baldwin, Ph.D., Director, Wroxton College and the college staff for their assistance and hospitality during the creation of this project.
All photographs and original media content copyright © 2003 Howard Goldbaum
QuickTime and the QuickTime Logo are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. The Get QuickTime Badge is a trademark of Apple Computer Inc., used with permission.
