Re: IPIX against Panorama_Tools

[John Goodman <jgood@xxxxxxxx>]

< preaching to the choir... >

Here's hoping Helmut breaks the already thin leg IPIX 
appears to be standing on w.r.t. spherical panoramas 
derived from 8 mm fisheye lenses. IPIX's behavior reveals 
not only a poor understanding of "prior art", but despicably 
short-sighted corporate greed. They may enjoy a customer 
base willing to pay a per click fee for their proprietary 
solutions, but they can't monopolize all spherical 
panoramas.

Panorama Tools has made it possible for pioneers such as 
Andrew Nemeth to create far higher quality results than 
IPIX spherical panoramas, using full-frame fisheye source 
images, a number shot radially and one overhead. The 
sophistication of Panorama Tools even enables one to do 
without a pan head when acquiring images of a scene for 
this purpose.

Furthermore, Infinite Pictures and Kaidan now appear to 
be entering the spherical pano arena, and though their 
solution is pricey ($1,499 list), 10 shot sequences with a 
14 mm lens gets you any number of "full spherical high-
resolution panorama(s)". IPIX lawyers should have a field 
day at

http://www.smoothmove.com/html/Press_Center/PR_sphericalphoto_021899.html

(Hope they are all reduced to impotent spluttering...)

It would be heartening if, in accord with the spirit of the 
Internet's empowering an alternative to IPIX bullying, there 
were a number of URLs where the latest version of 
Panorama Tools could be downloaded while Helmut has 
disabled access to these from his site.

John Goodman		jgood@xxxxxxxx