T3D Re: 3D QuickTime VR

[John Fairstein <jfairstein@xxxxxxx>]

Greg Wageman writes: "Microsoft recently pushed their latest Windows
Media Player onto my NT4.0 system (without my consent, I might add).

Yikes! I'm glad the Justice Dept is investigating this Bill Gates
fellow.

"Unfortunately it seems to think it knows how to display your QTVR
movies..."

Even though it has the same .mov suffix, the QuickTime Movie Player
knows that its looking at QTVR. I think QT3 Movie Player may be smarter
than the Windows Media Player.

"...but displays them in two windows.  One is a narrow
vertically-oriented strip, which seems to encompass the entire panorama,
but rotated 90 degrees; the other displays a portion of the strip in
anaglyph, but also rotated 90 degrees."

You are seeing the low res PICT preview in one frame and the real QTVR
in the other frame. The low res preview displays while the real QTVR
loads. The 90 degree rotation is probably because Media Player thinks it
is looking at a conventional movie.

"I suppose I could re-install Quicktime to have it override
MediaPlayer's usurpation of Quick Time video clips, but that's such a
hassle..."

It may not be as bad as you think. Go to http://www.apple.com/quicktime/
for the free download. After I downloaded, my browser displays QTVRs
automatically with no effort on my part. As an added incentive, you'll
be able to view the 3D QTVR of Mars at
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/vrml/qtvr_stereo.html


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