***** Computer Select, October 1994 : Articles ***** Journal: Macworld Oct 1994 v11 n10 p34(2) COPYRIGHT Macworld Communications Inc. 1994 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: QuickTime VR: a new spin. (enhanced version of Apple's QuickTime desktop video software) Author: Crotty, Cameron Abstract: Apple's new QuickTime VR enhances the QuickTime movie format to include spatial information that is not time-based, representing three-dimensional spaces and objects in a semi-interactive manner even on Macs that are not powerful enough to do rendering. Users creating a QuickTime VR movie use a camera on a tripod to photograph the space to be represented and then edit and merge the photos with Apple tools, later digitizing the result into a movie. QuickTime VR is built around image interpolation; a spatial-warping algorithm corrects for viewer perspective. It is an elegantly designed program, but is not yet supported by third-party applications. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Full Text: Imagine that you're in the middle of a room. Now, smoothly look around--left, right, up, and down--at will. If you see something interesting, you can zoom in on it, pick it up, and examine it from all sides, turning it over in your hands. Stop. You've just experienced QuickTime VR. Coming out of Apple's Advanced Technology Group, QuickTime VR expands the QuickTime data format to include non-time-based spatial information. In English, it's a startlingly realistic way to represent a three-dimensional space or object. Even better, QuickTime VR movies work on LC III-class Macs and can provide views of real environments. This is virtual reality without the helmets and goggles. VR with the Gloves Off Interacting with a QuickTime VR movie is like looking at a room through a camcorder's viewfinder. Clicking and dragging on the movie display causes your view to pan in that direction, and the speed of the movement is variable and easily controlled. For objects or places of interest in the room, developers can create "hot spots" in the movie. As you drag across a hot spot, your cursor changes to alert you to its presence, and you can click to zoom in on the object or move into the area. A QuickTime VR movie can just as easily represent an object as a space. In this case, clicking and dragging inside the movie frame causes the object to spin and tumble so that you can examine it from all sides. To create a QuickTime VR movie, you first set a camera on a tripod and photograph the space you want represented. Depending on the camera and lens you use, it takes from 8 to 30 photographs to make up a single 360-degree view. After scanning the photos, a developer uses Apple's QuickTime VR tools to edit and merge the photographs and then turn the result into a movie. (The developer can apply a modified version of this process to rendered environments and objects.) A single panoramic view at 640-by-480-pixel (full-screen) image size with medium-high resolution takes up 800K. Since QuickTime VR is an extension of the QuickTime architecture, developers can use QuickTime's built-in functionality to juggle resolution, compression, image size, and file size. VR versus 3-D The result of these machinations is a little package that neatly solves some of the thorniest problems facing developers trying to realistically render a three-dimensional object or space in real time. As a user moves through a rendered "world," the location of each object must be constantly recalculated, whether or not the user is looking directly at an object. As the number of objects mounts, these calculations rapidly overtake even the most powerful processors, so there's little or no horsepower left over to create the kind of rich, textured environment that arises naturally from a photograph. According to Eric Chen, inventor of the QuickTime VR technology, playing back a VR movie is a simple matter (to anyone who understands image-interpolation theory) of pushing the user's current view through a spatial-warping algorithm that corrects for the viewer's perspective. All you need for a QuickTime VR experience is an LC III-class Mac or better and Quick-Time 2.0 (or a 386SX PC and QuickTime 2.0 for Windows). Developers of 3-D modeling, rendering, and animation programs retort that it's possible to ease the computational load by precalculating much of a carefully designed world. Also, what QuickTime VR gains in photographic real-ism, it gives up in freedom of movement, limiting its usefulness. According to Frank Boosman, vice president of product marketing for Virtus VR, "You get semi-interactive 3-D on machines that aren't capable of doing rendering. Forcing users of those machines to move along fixed paths is a reasonable trade-off to make, but rendering scenes in real time is still preferable." Coming Attractions Despite its elegant innards, QuickTime VR is a hammer waiting for someone to pick it up and go pound some nails. Apple envisions VR's adoption in several fields: virtual museums, virtual travel for kids and adults, architectural and engineering applications, and of course, entertainment. Simon & Schuster Interactive is champing at the bit with its Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual, scheduled to be available in September. This CD-ROM is a tour of the starship Enterprise and its equipment, and it is intended to feel like a reference that Enterprise engineer Geordi LaForge would turn to in the 24th century. The disc covers the Enterprise both inside and out, and includes tours of the crew's personal quarters, including Captain Picard's. However, at press time Simon & Schuster was the only company with firm plans for the new technology. Apple nurtured QuickTime VR in near-total secrecy--even top-drawer developers were surprised by the recent announcement. En-tertainment and multime-dia companies are cautiously optimistic; 3-D developers such as Specular and Ray Dream have responded positively to the idea of saving a three-dimensional model or scene as a VR movie but have indicated that adding such a feature would not be a priority. As befits the technology, QuickTime is not static. Apple would like to bleed VR movie functions such as interactive hot spots into traditional QuickTime movies, while bring-ing such time-based data as animation and QuickTime movies into VR spaces. See you in the movies. Apple Computer, 408/996-1010. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Company: Apple Computer Inc. Product: QuickTime VR (Desktop video software) Topic: Software Design Desktop Video Software Record#: 16 207 392 *** End ***