Cubic. What and Why?

  • First, some applause: you've done some great work with the development and documentation of krpano. Last week I was a complete beginner (well, with some AS3 programming skills); within 2 days I was able to program all of the functionality I need into a panorama with layered captions that appear and disappear when needed, and pop-up plugins. Very helpful docs. and also website forums. Will buy license next week.

    Now I have to create or commission some panoramic photography. I have only a little experience with pano photos. I'm confused about the cubic format. Is this a format that one stitches out of a full series of panoramic tiles in the way one stitches cylinders or spheres? If so, what's its advantage over equiangular (spherical) stitching? Or do I convert an already-stitched sphere to cubic? Again, if so, what's the advantage if I already have a sphere? Or can I create a cubic panorama by taking just 6 images with 90-degree FOVs? That would be nice!


    thanks, c.u.

  • Hi,

    the main reason for cubic is the rendering quality and performance and some device limitations,

    drawing flat 3d surfaces (cube) is faster and more accurate then trying to draw a curved 3d surface (sphere) in the most cases,
    additionally some devices like iOS don't have any possiblites to draw a curved 3d surface with an acceptable performance and quality,

    so that's just the display/presentation side - a pano image will be typically not produced in cubic format, the conversion to cubic will be done later (e.g. by the krpano tools, when using the droplets automatically),

    best regards,
    Klaus

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