online virtual environment- can anyone reccommend

[tom182]

Hi all,
I am looking at doing a series of interior rooms that can be navigated through by the user, The user takes a virtual tour of the building, and not sure what software is out there at the moment.
I looked at turntool a few years back but looks very 'games like',
Cult 3D seems dead and is more product shot than interiors,
Shockwave 3D, again havent seen anything that would suggest me taking this option.
My prerequisites are:
1. it has to look somewhat apporaching photoreal or in other words not like a gaming environment, guess I am talking Baking textures to achieve this?
2. that elements (mapped textures) can be modified via an xml file or similar,
3. Web/browser delivered.
WE have done this in Flash & as but its not a true 3D environment- you can just scroll left or right.

does anyone know of any software worth looking at?
appreciate any ideas,

Thanks
Tom

[Neilg]

unity is the closest to what you want, but it still doesnt look too hot.
To get it to look good you need to use an engine with good shader control. UE3, or Cryengine. But they're not browser delivered, and it takes a lot longer to do.

There is no perfect solution yet, real time work is nothing but a long string of compromise.

[tom182]

hmmm, thats kinda what I had feared,
It seems like this whole section has stood still over the past 6 yrs, if its not game related then nothing really new to showcase

cheers,
Tom

[Neilg]

It's not so much that it's stood still, it's just that the better you want it to look the higher the barrier for entry. So it just seems like it stood still, haha.

[beestee]

The individuals behind TwinMotion 2 seem to be attempting to lower some barriers in this realm. They have been at this for a few years now, using cryengine I believe. It seems they are at the threshold of a public release:

http://www.therenderingkiller.com/

As of right now, Unity is probably the best option if you do not have time to wait. There is a free version of it available to see if it might be something you could work with.

[tom182]

thanks Guys,
if I could do a mish-mash between QT VR and Flash I'd be sorted but thats not going to happen (
T

[mediasphere]

I worked with a company recently using Deltagen RTT the results were very good and included stereoscopic realtime too.

PI-VR VRED is also an option, both of these options are expensive and would possibly require a steep learning curve?

I've a similar project coming up later this month and was thinking of a flash based qtvr using pano2vr by Gardengnome with linked hotspots and background music.

Does anyone know which software Google use for Streetview ? Or if Google sell their software?

[add101]

V-Ray RT Version 3? ( just kidding)

Quest 3d has some impressive demos. There is some glow and specular bloom on examples on examples like celestial city.
I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but keen to look into it at some stage. I played around with cult3d years ago. I never got around to baking textures in though... The interface/action-scripting to create walkthroughs was quite simple once you've gone through the process/tutorial. Not sure how the Quest interface/learning-curve compares. The flexibility looks impressive.

Pano2VR looks good. I've used Pano2QTVR (the free version they offer- can't do hotspots/links etc. with it) and it's pretty simple. >Render image at 2x pixels by 1x pixels and spherical override cam in vray settings with 360 degree FOV. the just import to Pano2QTVR and export QTVR.
Google streetview looks a lot like a QuickTimeVR in fullscreen

[mediasphere]

The parts of Google Streetview which stand out are the zoom to next position. Something which, although poor quality, stands it out from the vast array of QTVR/Flash based 360 panoramas. Streetview provides that interactive walkthrough experience you just don't get from normal QTVR's.