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Technical Information

WHAT IS "INTERACTIVE VIRTUAL REALITY? "

Interactive Virtual Reality allows Web site visitors to navigate around the image of a scene or object.

By dragging their mouse cursor around the scene or object, users can view different perspectives.

Using the mouse or keyboard, they can zoom in or out on a section of the view. For complex views that might involve multiple scenes and/or objects, the user can switch between these by clicking on "hot spots" and/or clicking on a map or plan drawing associated with the overall scene.

Interactive VR can be fully integrated into your Web site, and is accessible to all users running current browsers under Macintosh or Windows computers.

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WHY ADD INTERACTIVE VIRTUAL REALITY?

Interactive VR panorama scenes are particularly useful for Web sites that want to display spatially related information to the customer. Examples are Real Estate promotion, Hotel and Resort promotion, regional recreational promotion, etc. Interactive VR objects are a valuable way of presenting detailed overview of items such as objects d'art, automobiles, boats, etc.

By combining panoramic and object VR, one can promote both a spatial facility and the items it contains; an example might be an art gallery where both the gallery itself, as well as its contents are being promoted.

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TECHNICAL OVERVIEW

Add Virtual, Inc. uses QuickTime VR (an Apple Computer, Inc. technology available for Macintosh and Windows platforms). QuickTime VR is based on Apple's QuickTime audio/video technology. QuickTime VR allows users to interactively navigate around a panorama scene or a three dimensional image of an object.

The QTVR scene can contain areas ("hot spots") that link to other QTVR scenes, or to Web URL's, or even to custom programs. Users can interact with assemblages of numerous scenes and/or objects using these "hot spots".

QTVR scenes can include sound tracks. Unlike streaming video (which is not user interactive), QTVR files are small enough to make them practical for business web site browsers.

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HOW IT'S DONE

QTVR is accomplished by integration of digital photography and specialized computer software. Panorama scenes are first photographed using digital camera equipment mounted on specially designed facilities to assist in accurate camera rotational indexing. Complex software employing sophisticated mathematics is then used to “stitch” (join) and blend the individual photos into a continuous panorama. Additional software operations convert the panorama into a special form of QuickTime movie that supports the user’s interactive navigation.

The process for creating object VR is similar but some variants of the photographic and software operations are involved. For special needs, some custom computer programming may be required.

For more technical information about QTVR, see www.outsidethelines.com/EZQTVR.html.

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