Da blogt er

Prologue : I originally planned to publish this blog post during the LGM 2026 in Nürnberg. Sadly, however, the  image  from the museum's object catalogue is under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, so I was not allowed to use it to create a VR panorama. Fortunately, however, the museum has given me permission today to use it under a CC0 1.0 license. At the Germanische Nationalmuseum , I discovered this 360° map of the Nuremberg area from 1581. I just had to convert this 360° round image into a panorama for VR glasses, especially as it is the oldest one I have ever seen – it is almost 500 years old! https://objektkatalog.gnm.de/objekt/La140   First, I removed the decorations in the corners and cleaned up the image. Then, using the workflow described in this old  tutorial , I created an equirectangular 360° panorama. Finally, I added metadata with ExifTool to enable Google Photos and other panorama viewers to detect it as a 360° panorama.    The embedded A-Frame I used s...

Since I wrote the original tutorial , GIMP has evolved, so I've created an updated version that makes use of the new features. The most important new features are that you can now use linked layers, layer groups and non-destructive effects. This tutorial discripes how to create this chrome ball with GIMP. First of all you need a equirectangular panorama . If you don't have one you can get one from HDRI Haven . For this tutorial I took this one: https://hdrihaven.com/hdri/?h=bell_park_pier This time I chose the 2k version because it is faster to process. Of cause you can use other resolutions if you like. Now create a new image with 2048x1024px and delete the background layer:   Then open the image in GIMP with "File -> Open as Link Layer..." and duplicate the layer. The "Open as Link Layer" gives you the possibillity to change the image later.   This is the background layer on which the chrome ball sits. We now need a second layer for the ball itself...

Alexandre Prokoudine does a great job with his Libre Arts blog and he made a big overview of the year 2022 with a preview of 2023 : As he looks at the big picture I collected some news from small more hidden open source graphics projects: Mobile As I'm only interested in the non mainstream mobile stacks I'm ignoring Android an OS here completely. Megapixels Megapixels got two new releases (1.5 and 1.6) with nice improvements.Meanwhile is Purism working on an fork called millipixels that is using libcamera. libcamera The first version of libcamera released and a lot of big companies like RedHat, Purism and the Raspberry Pi Foundation are working together to improve the camera stack. Image Viewer Image viewers are the kind of programmes that every one thinks are easy to write. But then you realise not only there are thousands of different file formats with metadata (with informations like "rotate this image", "this is an panorama", "geo locations...

Alexandre Prokoudine does a great job with  his Libre Arts blog and he made a big overview of the year 2021 : As he looks at the big picture I collected some news from small more hidden open source graphics projects: Mobile PinePhone and Purism Librem 5 got camera support and a portable new camera app (GTK3) Pine64 and Purism worked on phones with a default Linux Kernel. And they both now have camera drivers and they worked together on the camera app Megapixels:   https:// blog.brixit.nl/pinephone-came ra-pt4/ https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-news-summary-april-2021/     pine64.org now sells a Open Source IP Cam https:// pine64.org/cube/   ResberyPi   ResberyPi released a new version of there distribution and switched the camera stack to libcamera . Panorama Tools As Alexandre already talked about Hugin and SkyFill I have only two additions: Lux   A new free OpenGL image viewer specialists for panoramas : https://bitbucket.org/kfj/pv/src/master/ ...

I found an nice blog post "Alte Vase im neuen Gewand " from the Klassik Stiftung Weimar (Classical Foundation Weimar) : Crater shape vase with panorama of "Potsdam from the sight of Babelsberge", Bild: Klassik Stiftung Weimar In this blog post they describe how they use VR glasses to view an old vase. I think the use of virtual reality glasses for knowledge transfer in general and in museums in particular is a very good idea. However, the implementation in this case cannot use the advantages of virtual reality glasses to the full extent. Not the viewing of objects in 3D is the big advantage of VR glasses, but the immersion into other worlds. To illustrate this, I have taken the photographic roll of the panorama, which they have kindly provided, and edited it so that it has become a 360° panorama into which you can immerse yourself with VR glasses. Crater shape vase with panorama of "Potsdam from the sight of Babelsberge", Bild: Klassik Stiftun...

Here I collect all my VR images I created to show an overview. Die headlines are links to the longer blog articles. I use Goggle Photos media viewer in the Daydream app . An nice alternative Android app to view panoramas is the VR Media Player - 360° Viewer. CC BY Maurizio Pesce Old Images 1786 "A Circular View from the Balloon at its greatest Elevation", featured in Thomas Baldwin’s Airopaidia   https://photos.app.goo.gl/zYjsLDvNJF4cGNzd8 1779-1796 from Marc-Théodore Bourrit  https://photos.app.goo.gl/Yx1vFtsRhf8zKc9U9 1823 Adolph Kaiser: Panorama Inselsberg in VR Adolph Kaiser: Panorama Inselsberg. Bild: Klassik Stiftung Weimar Adolph Kaiser: Panorama Inselsberg. Bild: Klassik Stiftung Weimar edited by me https://photos.app.goo.gl/qNdzLtRdgzNUkaqa9   1824 Dresden from Carl August Richter  https://photos.app.goo.gl/hCnfMHmFACP2Q9Jy7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/jGhWqyXwtNXPZeNo9 1841 Königlichen Porzell...