Re: 3D CD update

[P3D Larry Berlin <lberlin@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997
>From: P3D Dan Shelley writes:
>
>Well folks, we are up to 22 people who have expresed a desire to be the
>financial backers that will make this project become a reality. Just a
>few more for the bare minimum... Any more takers?
>

I have several objections to the proposed format for this 3D CD. I've seen
some discussion of these items but no resolution of them has been offered
and a headlong rush to count noses despite the potential problems.

When I spend time visiting other 3D sites I encounter a number of situations
that are less than ideal. The result is that if the CD is just an exact copy
of existing material it's not very convenient at all.

Particularly, many sites use such tiny images that resolution is extremely
poor. That's not including any loss due to JPG, it's just tiny images.
What's worse is when the tiny images are anaglyphs only. I really don't like
viewing anaglyphs all that much and any that are worth viewing I generally
convert them to a better image format for my own enjoyment. What a hassle to
collect that much material and not have it available to view easily. I
wouldn't do that with my own web collection, why pay for a collection that's
inconvenient to use?

What this boils down to is that the collected images should be converted to
at least 3 or 4 versions for each image. In addition, the suppliers of small
images should be requested to supply a higher resolution version of their
images. NOT huge files, but not the tiny thumbnail size things that are too
frequently used. 

At a minimum I'd like to see all the images in a JPS format, for reasons of
the versatility that that offers in addition to the compression. So many of
the images are JPG anyway, that shouldn't be a problem other than it would
be ideal to create the JPS files from original full color TIF or BMP images,
not from the existing JPG or anaglyph or interlaced versions. The big
advantage is that for those who don't like anaglyphs or any other specific
viewing format, they can see the images in their own preferred method.

For those who are on Non-PC computers, there could be JPG versions, or they
can just read the JPS as JPG.

For those using interlaced LCS viewing systems, an interlaced image version
would be nice, without having to convert everything for each viewing
experience. True, JPS covers that base, but not everyone has the ability to
use the software for JPS. This is simply a practical point.

Too many websites have large scale parallel viewed images which can't be
freeviewed, despite the stated intention for freeviewing, so they would have
to be converted to cross viewable versions, or reduced in size so they
really are freeviewable.

I'm not saying the images should all be in my personal favorite format, what
I'm saying is that they should be in enough formats so that most person's
favorites are covered. This is a lot of work, but I consider it a minimum
level of effort before I would want my own images or web site incuded.
Anything less is just too confusing, limited, and sub standard. It just
doesn't make much sense to do less.

The above points direct the desirable situation back to the idea that
anything with this much work in it should be done as a commercial *for
profit* venture. Even if it's not expected to actually make a profit. The
reality is that if it's done carefully and comprehensively it would be far
superior to a straight out copy of existing material. It's raw usefulness
would lend it to being marketed in a limited way. Consider all the stereo
clubs, schools and educational institutions with photography classes, and
web marketing to new stereo interests and more.

If it's done as a *for profit* venture, then each person providing material
and permission, should be provided with some means of expecting their fair
share of any potential returns. Again that's more work, but absolutely
essential. Once the mechanism for creating this project is worked out,
future editions perhaps annually, would be a relatively easy thing.

Larry Berlin

Email: lberlin@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.sonic.net/~lberlin/
http://3dzine.simplenet.com/


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