A new Second Life “Project Viewer” has been released by Linden Lab that allows for the creation of 360° snapshots in Second Life virtual world scenes.
There is also a package of HTML and JavaScript that can be installed on a web site (supporting Python) which provides a framework for viewing the images that are created (works in Microsoft Edge, Mozilla, Google Chrome and Apple Safari on iOS, but not Internet Explorer).
- Second Life Wiki: 360 Snapshots
- Second Life Blog: A New Perspective on Second Life (26-Oct-2016)
- Examples: Callum Linden (using web viewing framework)
- Examples: Torley Linden (on Flickr)
- Hands-on: Second Life 360-degree snapshot viewer – Blog Post by Inara Pey (26-Oct-2016)
The 360° snapshot web viewing framework mounted on our own server at http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/360/ looks like this…
The current experimental project viewer saves a set of six 1024×1024 snapshots in a .zip file. Add any new 360° image .zip files you save to the “shots” directory in the web framework, and then access them via a URL of the style…
http://domainname:port/index.html?shot=shots/NAME.zip
E.g., http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/360/?shot=shots/default.zip
Vue Region in Second Life
Click for 360° view… http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/360/?shot=shots/vue.zip
The icon in the top left corner gives you a link to visit the destination.
I-Room on Vue Region in Second Life
Click for 360° view… http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/360/?shot=shots/iroom.zip
The icon in the top left corner gives you a link to visit the destination.
Fish4Knowledge (F4K) Gallery in Second Life
Click for 360° view… http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/360/?shot=shots/f4k.zip
The icon in the top left corner gives you a link to visit the destination.
Menu of 360° Images
A sample file menu.html in the web viewer framework can be edited to show the collection of 360 images available. Click on icon in top left corner for full sized view. See example at http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/360/menu.html
Using other Formats – 2:1 Pixel Apect Ratio for Flickr
Once you are viewing an image using the web viewer framework that operates on the .zip files, you can download it in a 2:1 aspect ratio suitable for upload to Flickr for sharing and viewing in 360°. The download button is indicated in the image to the right. Images download using it are in 2:1 pixel aspect ration (PAR) at 4096×2048, and contains XMP metadata specifying a “ProjectionType” which should be recognized as a 360 image. This means they can be uploaded directly to Flickr for 360° viewing. Inara Pey’s blog post gives helpful details.
Some examples produced using this procedure are available in http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/360/pano/.
After creating an album and uploading some of the 2:1 PAR images downloaded in this way… here is an example of a number of panoramas in Flickr… this also works in Internet Explorer…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/aiaustin/albums/72157674590685540
360° Snapshots in a Virtual Reality Headset
The “360 Photos” app in the Oculus Store can be used to view 360° snapshots saved in an appropriate format. One of the formats allowed is the same 2:1 ratio image format that can be output from the Linden Lab web viewer framework and that works with Flickr. Any JPEG photos with either an equi-rectangular projection (recommended 4096×2048) or a cube map (recommended 1536×1536 per cube side) will render in the application. You simply place these in the directory indicated below and they appear as “My Photos”…
C:\Users\<username>\Pictures\OculusPhotos
Advice to Create Better 360° Snapshots
The Second Life Wiki 360° Snapshot Page has advice on setup of the viewer to create better snapshots, particularly for this early test version of the viewer with its limited facilities to “freeze” the scene to capture the multiple camera angles needed.
Glitches
As expected there are a few glitches with this initial project viewer.
- When the box to “Do not capture my avatar” is ticked in the 360 snapshot creator tool, avatar attachments such as hair and shoes continue to show. A sample of this is at
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/360/?shot=shots/vue-too-high.zip - If you try to take a snapshot with a viewpoint that is too high up in the sky, not surprisingly, there is an obvious “box” straight edge effect on the horizon at the junctions of the stitching of the images. A sample of this is at
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/360/?shot=shots/vue-too-high.zip - In the menu.html web page template, the icon in the top left corner of each thumbnail opens the full sized image, but the same icon in that full sized view gives you a link to the Second Life map location. Maybe two different icons would work better, especially as the “About -> Controls” help page indicates that icon is to visit the region via the map.
- A few viewer crashes occurred.
Other 360° Snapshot Creation Approaches
Other approaches to creating 360° snapshots in Second Life using multiple cameras have been created and are documented in this blog post.
Happy Halloween 2016
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/360/index.html?shot=shots/halloween.zip
and in Flickr…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/aiaustin/30531250701/in/album-72157674590685540/
Setup to Hide Ground in Aerial 360° Snapshots
When taking snapshots at a height above a region, even if the viewing distance is set low enough that all objects on the ground do not show, the surface patch, ground and water of the regions below you can show in a snapshot. To avoid this you can turn off the rendering of these elements… in Advanced (Ctrl+Alt+D to show) -> Render.
Click for 360° view… http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/360/?shot=shots/supercar.zip
and http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/360/?shot=shots/supercar-cockpit.zip
Works in Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome and Apple Safari
(but not Internet Explorer)