Sharpness and file size issues

[ScottWitte]

Thomas,

I'm a bit concerned about the sharpness of the QTVR output so I did a comparison which you can view here: http://www.scottwitte.com/VR/Sharpness_Test.jpg

Notice that the pano from pano2QTVR (1.6.6), while less sharp than the original, is actually sharper than the pano2VR (beta 2c) output. The original is from one of the cube faces produced by pano2QTVR from the equilateral original, 1908 px in size. Each QTVR output has a cube face size of 1908 and static quality of lossless. In other words, the quality should be as good as possible.

Why is the advanced new pano2VR producing less sharp output than the old pano2QTVR?

With cube face size the same as the original, why can't either match the original's sharpness even with quality static at lossless?

BTW, thanks for all the great development work you do!

[ScottWitte]

Thomas (or anyone else),

I really didn't mean this to be rhetorical. Am I doing something wrong that is impacting sharpness? Is this a beta issue that will be resolved soon?

I love and depend on this software so I, all of us, really, need it to perform without compromise.

Thanks for your attention!

[erik leeman]

I had the same impression, so I only use Pano2VR for making Flash9 versions and I continue using Pano2QTVR for generating cubefaces (16-bit) and QuickTimeVR files.
It really doesn't bother me too much because I only bought Pano2VR for Flash9 anyway. For me the addition of an integrated interface for the Flash files (a full screen button!) is much more important than anything else.

Regards,

erik leeman

[thomas]

I did some tests and I reduced the "kernel size" a little bit for the next version. It is always a very thin line between aliasing and a too blurry image. From the theoretical standpoint the images in Pano2VR are as the they should be... even better than in Pano2QTVR but I have to commit they sometimes look too blurry so I changed that a bit for the upcoming beta3. This will result in little aliasing but the images looks sharper. Maybe I will also implement an option to sharpen the images after the conversion. I have also an idea to tweak another point in the conversion pipeline but this will require some more time and math to bring this into Pano2VR.
btw: beta3 will finally have a full screen button!

[ScottWitte]

Super. Thanks Thomas!

I especially like the idea of optional, user controlled sharpening.

[AZ ChopperCam]

I especially like the idea of optional, user controlled sharpening.

indeed! that would be great.

[360Texas]

Sharpness,

The panoramas we did at Lake Travis were created using Pano2VR b4

http://360texas.com/services/sr/demo/index.htm

[quadro]

I'm with beta4, but the sharpness in flash 8 is still much better than flash 9.

Here is an animated comparison sample

And here is the original swf files: Flash8 Flash9

[ScottWitte]

Quadro,

Your Flash 8 example isn't exactly sharper, rather it isn't anti-aliased while the Flash 9 example is. Zoom in on your gif and this will become very obvious. For example the power lines are disjointed segments in Flash 8, that is they are aliased. Flash 9 attempts to smooth or anti-aliase the segments into a continuous line. Generally that is preferred but can make the image look less sharp.

As for your full pano samples, I think you used the Flash 9 version for both. When I zoomed in they seemed exactly the same and where both anti-aliased in the same way.

[quadro]

Quadro,

Your Flash 8 example isn't exactly sharper, rather it isn't anti-aliased while the Flash 9 example is.
.... Generally that is preferred but can make the image look less sharp.

You are right. I prefer to look sharper, but not so anti-aliased.

As for your full pano samples, I think you used the Flash 9 version for both. When I zoomed in they seemed exactly the same and where both anti-aliased in the same way.

You're wrong! Animated GIF is made by two captures from these panos

[ScottWitte]

You're wrong! Animated GIF is made by two captures from these panos

Curious. Could you try this: Open both the flash 8 and flash 9 links in your message in separate tabs on your browser. Zoom way in on both to the exact same degree being careful not to move either pano. Toggle back and forth between them. Can you see a difference? Which example from the GIF (zoomed way in) more closely matches the SWFs?

[quadro]

I don't want to zoom. I assume that my visitors will not zoom too. I took captures without zooming. Yes, in some level of zooming there will disappear the difference, because anti-aliasing effect is less visible when everything is big. I just want to ask Thomas to include option for custom level of anti-aliasing. I thought that in b3 the difference between flash 8 and flash 9 anti-aliasing will disappear.

[thomas]

Which interpolators did you use for those images?

[quadro]

Which interpolators did you use for those images?

Lanczos3 as I can remember
But I tried many others. I dont' think that it's a question of interpolators. Both of panos are made with same interpolator, everything is the same except flash version.

[Keith Mackey]

I'm also still noticing quite a degradation in sharpness in Pano2VR v.2.0 beta 4b over what I'm able to get in Pano2QTVR (1.6.6) for QTVR output. Hope this can be resolved in a future release, as even lossless does not seem to help.
Keith