GigaPanner

With the release of Silverlight3, there’s a new way to embed GigaPans into a web page. I still get a bit confused by Microsoft’s usage of Silverlight Deep Zoom and HD View, but in any case they’ve got an product (or pair of them) that has some interesting features for the GigaPanner. Have a look:

This is another iFrame solution to embedding photos in a blog, so it won’t work for those using WordPress.com hosted blogs, but if you’re hosting your own WordPress.org blog or using other blogging software that allows iFrame embeds, this solution might work well for you.

One important thing to note: If you try to cut and paste the URL from GigaPan’s “View in Google Earth 4.2+” link below a geolocated GigaPan into the HD View Preview utility it won’t work. You’ll need to take the URL that you cut and paste and append “&nonl=1″ (minus the quotes) to the end of the URL. Why? Beats me, but I followed the examples they gave in the right hand sidebar to figure this out.

[Update: Well it looked good on their site, but apparently WordPress doesn't like it on my site. I just upgraded my servers, so it may be a configuration issue on my end. I'll keep investigating...]

[Update #2: It works now! Thanks to Eric Stollnitz for his assistance.]

On my Geology Blog I’ve previously written about my excitement about the Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project (YEPIP).

Well it turns out there’s news to update. As of about two weeks ago (I’m a little slow) they’ve got a preview of their progress available in a Silverlight DeepZoom format (requires a Silverlight install).

And how does it look? Awesome! It’s well worth the download of Silverlight to get a preview of the 20 stitched panoramas included with the shaded relief map of Yosemite Valley. It’s a tour de force demonstration of the Microsoft DeepZoom and Silverlight technologies, to boot. The zoom experience is even smoother than the flash implementation that runs the GigaPan.org website. I’m going to definitely need to do some deeper exploration of these new Microsoft technologies…

And if that main course wasn’t enough to fill you up, here are some additional appetizers/desserts:

1) Robert Scoble’s blog post (yes, he still posts to his blog every once in a while) about the YEPIP along with his wrapup of the Microsoft Pro Photo Summit. Particularly interesting are the videos he captured at the conference including one of Greg Downing and Eric Hanson, co founders of xRez Studios, demonstrating the YEPIP on a <drool>Microsoft Surface computer</drool> and another of Bill Crow of Microsoft Live Labs discussing the Seadragon/DeepZoom project. (Coincidentally, I just discovered Bill Crow tweeting about gigapixel panoramas this past weekend.) In a third video the xRez guys drop a hint that they’re hoping to have a hundred foot long continuous print panorama of the Yosemite Valley on display at SIGGRAPH later this year.

2) The xRez folks also have a Flickr gallery of photos taken during the YEPIP event.

3) It looks like a couple of the xRez panoramas are beginning to appear on the GigaPan.org site. I’m hoping many more will follow.

I’ll be very interested to see their final product, not only for the spectacularly innovative and envelope-stretching use of gigapixel panoramic imagery, but also for its application to scientific study of the geology of the Yosemite Valley.