Shenmue Dojo

I'm playing around with panorama software and thought it would be interesting to try and stitch together Shenmue panoramas. It turns out that it is much harder to accomplish than in most 3D games, where you can control the camera steadily. Nevertheless, here's one test that didn't turn out as disastrous as the previous ones:

Hazuki Residence's front yard

The most useful camera mode is zoom mode but it has a few issues of it's own. For one it zooms in and locks onto objects of interest (none on this angle fortunately). The other issue with this camera mode is when you point the camera towards the ground it starts zooming in much further than on other angles.

The normal camera mode is worse though. With normal camera, even though you can make Ryo invisible and make it look as an FPS view, the camera rotation is limited to something like 180º and besides the camera zooms in when reaching it's limits. Rotating the character itself is also not good enough for two reasons, one is that it's limited to the X axis, the other is that the player moves a bit around it's own X axis which changes the angle enough to screw the final result.

If anyone knows any trick/code to rotate the camera axis steadily, that would help make awesome panoramas.

Looks great!

Thanks.
I did a new stitch with proper aspect ratio. It looks much better.

Please, make this compatible with VR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yokosuka wrote: Please, make this compatible with VR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In fact I had thought about it just a while ago but unfortunately I can't test it because I don't have VR hardware. In any case, I leave bellow the original and maybe someone can either convert it or use it with their VR panorama software viewer.



I came across this bit of information about some of the existing support for 360 panoramas for VR headsets too, see bellow.



Also, this panorama viewer is very cool in that it supports some form of gyroscopic sensor*: https://cdn.pannellum.org/2.3/pannellum ... oRotate=-5

*unsure if that is useful for VR headsets other than those powered by mobile devices

Have you the same panorama for the right/left eye? This way, maybe I can get a 3D panorama.

Yokosuka wrote: Have you the same panorama for the right/left eye? This way, maybe I can get a 3D panorama.

No, I do not. But the information I read led me to believe that existing 360º panorama viewers for VR headsets would do that on the fly.

EDIT: I read a bit more information online and so far everything suggests that the image that I provide should work just fine for VR. Here's an example of such discussions: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4212 ... or-cubemap

By the way, the image that I provided is equirectangular, I can convert to cubemap too but don't see the point at the moment.

I tested a trial version of a software called Pano2VR which supposedly does that VR setup.
As I don't have any means of actually testing this I appreciate if someone can try it and tell me if this actually works:

https://mega.nz/#!X1IATRjK!2vM5K0a_BKi6YZQbS4WOea9jpH2vPoxDnWXrhlMZru0

This zip file contains a portable webserver for Windows (includes Apache, PHP and MySQL).
Extract the folder from it and run the file 'usbwebserver.exe', it should then automatically open your browser on the local address which will load the test VR panorama. I hope it works.

This can be done inside 3DS max with Vray, infact I will do it to show off my new shenmue models :p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwvh8ZrNyt0

I've got a GearVR. Will try this out and report back!

Oculus Rift owners could potentially use LiveViewRift, which I think is freeware and is available for Windows and Mac. Check it out here: http://soft.viarum.com/liveviewrift/

Here's a demo video:


Note: Jump to minute 8 to see equirectangular panorama being tested.

In general there are promising web plugins (like 'WebVR') that could be compatible with a wide array of VR devices. Try this demo and leave feedback if possible: https://krpano.com/tours/corfu/

WebVR is an experimental JavaScript API that provides access to Virtual Reality devices, such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Samsung Gear VR, or Google Cardboard, in your browser. The WebVR API is currently available in Firefox Nightly builds, in Chrome 56+ for Android and experimental builds of Chromium for Windows, and in the Samsung Internet Browser for Gear VR.

More info at: https://webvr.info/

Hi,

I installed LiveViewRift but my Rift doesn't recognize it. Your links doesn't seem compatible either as there is a black screen in the VR emulation window.

Webvr.info instructions didn't work so I had to download "WebVR Plus" to make your Corfu panorama working on Nightly Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... r-enabler/
The panorama is perfectly smooth.

Happy to know that. That's really great!