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| 3D/VR Stereo Photo Viewer |
It seems like it has been a long time since my last post, because I have been very busy coding, testing, and writing. Especially in the last three weeks, when I published and polished my new 3D/VR Stereo Photo Viewer app for Android Google Cardboard VR head mounted devices. I also built a supporting web site. It's a for sale app on the Google Play Store, and is an upgrade from my free app 3D Stereo Photo Viewer. You can find it at:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andymodla.apps.vrstereophotoviewer
The web site supporting these apps is http://www.tekla3d.com
Why buy this app when you can get the free version??
The answer is that you can use the app with Google Cardboard VR headsets. The app corrects the lens distortion that occurs with Cardboard style headsets, yet it can still be used with smart phone stereoscopes, same as the free app. In the free app the distortion of the lens in Cardboard VR may not bother you depending on the photo, but you will only see the center of the photo close up in the Cardboard HMD due to the immersive viewing effect of these headsets for VR.
With the paid app you can zoom in and out of the photo and reposition your viewing window over any area of interest in the photo. You zoom in by rolling (airplane roll) the HMD to the right (i.e. clockwise) and zoom out by rolling to the left (i.e. counter-clockwise). You reposition the viewing window by moving the headset left/right (airplane yaw) and up/down (airplane pitch). By moving your headset to zoom and reposition, the result is similar to making a temporary photo crop. This will be of interest depending on the photo subject.
The app will also automatically detect when you reposition out of the photo. Then you can click (pull lever) or enter key on a remote controller to get back to the center.
The advantages of the zoom feature are:
- Zoom-in will show photo details you might otherwise miss. And you can see much more detail when photos are sized to 4K (3840x2160 pixels) for each eye, and stored as individual left and right photos. This works well even for phones that have 1920x1080 display resolution.
- Zoom-out allows you to see close foreground subjects with more eye comfort.
Other new features in the Cardboard VR mode use two remote bluetooth controller keys for viewing with a headset. These features replace the keys used for Camera cha-cha and Menu..
- When you view 3D photos from web sites, some of the images in a web page may not be 3D. A remote key (volume up) allows you to switch to 2D mode showing the same photo in each eye, do you don't have to open the HMD to change your view.
- Sometimes your viewing window in the headset may be far from the center. For this situation there is a remote recenter key (volume down) to reposition the viewing window to the center of the photo but keep the same zoom level.
There is also a new free app consisting of a short collection of 3D photos from a vacation trip to Barcelona, Spain, where we visited a food market "El Mercat de La Boqueria". The photos were taken with a FujiFilm W3 camera (3D), aligned with Stereo Photo Maker and color adjustments made with Lightroom. This app demonstrates how the head movement works in the paid app.
