by Sandra Mexa | Nov 15, 2016 | News
Panedia’s 360 cruise videos done for Cruiseabout were distinguished with a Silver Award at the Sydney Design Awards on the Digital – TravelTech category. This VR production was part of a broader marketing campaign that included the cruise VR experience combined with other traditional/digital marketing media, that aimed to get people a next to real experience before making a final decision on taking the cruise. This was an amazing and exciting project to be part of, and it is absolutely rewarding to see a client receive an award as recognition of a great use of this technology and of our high quality VR...
by Sandra Mexa | Oct 11, 2016 | News
Panedia was today at the Qantas Safety Conference showcasing its latest work and technology. All the participants valued our work and we were very happy with the feedback received. Panedia...
by Sandra Mexa | Sep 8, 2016 | News
While the full project is not yet released, Panedia was showing Monaco 360 Première on the Gear VR. Sorry we can’t show any footage, still have to wait for full project release. It was an amazing Première of the Monaco 360 film in Melbourne. Feedback was extremely positive and everyone was in awe after experiencing Monaco 360. We came off it with a feeling of mission accomplished and grateful that we had such an opportunity to bring Monaco to Melbourne. Kudos to a great #Panedia / #Seaview360 team with Pierre Frolla, Aaron Spence, Christophe Bailhache, Sophie Ansel and James...
by Sandra Mexa | Sep 1, 2016 | News
As an important client, we value your thoughts and would like to know how you felt about working with us. Please don’t be concerned about hurting our feelings, we really want to know where you’ve been delighted or unimpressed with our service. Let us know here. From the team at Panedia, we thank you. Panedia listens to you...
by Sandra Mexa | Aug 8, 2016 | News
Last week we received a rather nice email from our friends at Google. Something about 1/4 of a Billion views of our content on Google Maps. Google Maps Panedia...
by Sandra Mexa | Jul 8, 2016 | News
A article about our participation on the Google Street View Oceans Project. A nice article about our work but written with some imprecision. For those who want a bit more information, here some highlights: – In 2012 Panedia started a partnership with Catlin Seaview Survey project, working on a technical solution to capture high quality underwater 360 images. SVI was the first equipment designed able of capturing a high volume of data. Panedia had on the previous years developed systems able to deal with processing large amounts of data rapidly. Part of this content was added to Google Underwater Street View, now Google Oceans. – In 2013 SVII (a new version of the underwater capturing system) was developed and the GRR (Global Reef Record) was launched. – In 2014 Panedia started adding a small part of its vast content to Google Maps and registered record views, having reached 240+ Million views on its own content. If we add Panedia client’s content that we produced, like Sydney Opera House, Catlin Seaview Survey or Tourism Queensland, that number is about 440+ million. This project is ongoing and Panedia is proud to be collaborating now for 4 years with The Ocean Agency and Google on this huge task to survey the ocean, creating awareness for major climate issues like reef coral bleaching, ocean pollution and the need for reefs preservation. Panedia is also proud of its long path in the VR industry, having celebrated this year the 10th anniversary of the first panorama produced in Panedia systems. With a team that combines in between our 3 senior people more than 40 years...
by Sandra Mexa | May 30, 2016 | News
It is always exciting when we see our work featuring the news… Our clients at Cruiseabout are making a good use of Virtual Reality, expanding its use both in Marketing and customer sales. Its all good use for the technology and a push to make reach the final consumer. Cruise...
by Sandra Mexa | Apr 20, 2016 | Projects, News
Today we’re launching the beta of our Samsung GearVR app, Play VR. http://www.panedia.com/playvr It’s an app we’ve developed specifically for VR demos at shows and for clients, while it also has ‘advanced’ features for viewing our own content. (or yours) We’ve done over 1,000 VR demo’s and have been frustrated at the limitations of the Oculus 360video player, and how slow it is to access content via the Oculus store. (3-4 clicks before you get to the content.) Play VR has various modes you can set depending on requirements: 1. LOOP MODE: Swipe up and select LOOP MODE. Then select the video to loop. Now the same video will play endlessly, while the touchpad controls are disabled. Clients will no longer change video/pause or otherwise mess up the demo when putting on the GearVR. To restart the video any time, just click the ‘back’ button. 2. DEMO MODE: Like Loop mode, it disables controls, but only while the video is playing. When the video finishes the user can select another video. 3. ADVANCED MODE (Default): Here we’ve added amazing tools no one has ever conceived like… Fast Forward, Rewind. (All Patented of course wink emoticon) Swipe forward to Fast Forward, Swipe back to rewind. Swipe up to bring up a menu when playing a video. Access chapter points and view description, author etc. We’ve built this app specifically for our own needs as Professional VR producers, if you find it useful too, all the better. We don’t have the app on the Oculus Store yet, so we need to add your Phone ID to the Beta app in order...
by Sandra Mexa | Apr 11, 2016 | News
Two years after start using the Google Maps system for publishing VR content, we have reached 200 million views on our 360 degree panoramas. It is amazing to have reached this milestone, mainly because we jumped 100 million in a short 6 months time. More importantly, we are celebrating the joy and enthusiasm of having our high quality VR content available for people to experience a wide variety of places and virtually visit locations that most would not be able to do otherwise. At the same time, we count over 10 years of publishing our first panorama on the Panedia VR Production system and over 15 years of producing actual VR content. Right in the middle of the exciting ‘reaching the consumer market’ boom that VR is going through, we get ready for many more years of new projects, technology developments and hopefully, much more views on Google...
by Sandra Mexa | Mar 21, 2016 | News
The Australian government has rose the emergency response level and warns that bleaching may be linked to climate change. Panedia has been working with XL Catlin Seaview Survey and University of Queensland in closely monitoring the global coral reefs and comparing VR images taken before and after the bleaching phenomenon. The differences are visible and our imagery shows up in this National Geographic article. National Geographic...
by Aaron Spence | Mar 8, 2016 | Projects, News
10 years ago the first iPhone was more than a year away. Google Street View had well over a year until launch. Facebook wouldn’t become open for another 6 months. Palmer Luckey the founder of Oculus was 13 years old and VR as a head mounted modern technology was almost a decade from realisation. But 10 years ago, specifically at 5:22pm on March 8th 2006 a very important thing was happening at Panedia. It’s the day I shot the very first panorama (above) in what was to become our Panorama Production System. It’s around the time Michelle (my wife) and I decided to risk everything we had on VR and it’s close to the day Panedia was registered as a company. So it’s the day we celebrate 10 amazing years of Panedia. 10 years ago I was starting on a new journey. Sure I had been shooting panoramas for 6+ years at the time, but not as my only source of income. From that day onwards I was dedicated only to VR. Not only dedicated but prepared to spend every dollar I had and more, building a company and system to produce VR better and faster than ever before, and importantly with GPS data for online mapping. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars and years later, we have what I regard as the best professional panorama system there is. With our systems we have become the number one contributor to Google Maps worldwide. In fact just today we received an email from Google congratulating us on 175 million views of our VR content on Google Maps. From our systems...
by Aaron Spence | Nov 9, 2015 | News
One and a half years ago we published our first virtual tour on Google Maps. It was a gorgeous sunrise walk around the base of Uluru (Ayers Rock), one of Australia’s most important landmarks. Given 99.999% of the world’s people will never visit Uluru we’ve enjoyed providing this content on our websites for years. But our websites don’t have the reach of Google, with 1 billion monthly visitors to Google Maps. So it was with much pleasure we published this group of panoramas on Google Maps to enable people from all over the globe to experience Uluru. Over the following months we published many other Virtual Tours from around the world that we’d had the privilege to photograph. From New York City to London, Paris, Tokyo, Nepal, Lisbon, Los Angeles, San Francisco and many other wonderful places. We are so very pleased that people have responded overwhelmingly to the content we’ve produced, this is reflected in the number of panorama views we’ve had: 100 Million Google Maps Views. To us it is extremely rewarding to see those numbers, while we continue to love ‘the magic’ in this technology that allows people thousands of kilometres away to be able to enjoy a specific place or event as much as we enjoyed capturing it. After more than 15 years producing 360 – VR content I never grow tired of it, and don’t believe I ever will. Panedia on Google...
by Sandra Mexa | Oct 24, 2015 | News
Interesting article in this artist’s blog where it suggests to use VR content has inspiration for painters. Several Panedia VR images are showed has example. ‘Now you don’t need to go on a plane to travel and see the world’ says the Spanish painter in her blog....
by Sandra Mexa | Sep 8, 2015 | News
Interview with Aaron Spence. A short glance at Panedia and its work. Panedia BMNet.us
by Aaron Spence | Jun 1, 2015 | News
Things are a ‘little’ hectic at present. We’re just back from a crazy time shooting multiple projects around Vivid and the Opera House in Sydney. Carlos left this morning on a 2 week shoot for Tourism Queensland and just now we passed 30 Million Views on Google Maps. 30,059,310 to be precise 😉 We used to announce each additional million views our content had amassed, but somewhere around 16 million our view count was going up at almost a million a week, so it became pointless. Then we planned for a party at 20 million, which flew by while we were running a stand at an Expo in Melbourne, then we thought… OK 25 million for something special, but we jumped way beyond that when the Nepal earthquake caused a LOT of people to look at our Nepal panoramas. So now here we are on 30 million, Carlos and Sandra are away, and we’re insanely busy on a bunch of projects. I guess we start planning for a 50 million view party instead? Check out Arches National Park, Utah, USA here – Panedia Google Street...
by Sandra Mexa | Apr 28, 2015 | News
Very interesting article on the New York Times using VR technology. Brian Dawson was on Katmandu, Nepal just when the earthquake hit the city and shot these panoramas for the New York Times. By making a very good use of the VR technology the newspaper showed some of Panedia’s Katmandu VR images taken before the disaster and compared with the ones taken by Brian. The devastation is heartbreaking and quite visible. On this article we can even interact with both images simultaneously and see all around as we here actually there. It was quite a clever way to use VR for journalism and it certainly rose attention for this disaster and the need to help the Nepal people. On the same theme, some Panedia panoramas on Upworthy The New York...
by Sandra Mexa | Apr 28, 2015 | News
Last week Panedia participated in Connect Expo 2015 trade show that took place in Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. We had an Exhibitor stand in the Virtual Reality area and our CEO Aaron Spence spoke in a couple of seminar sessions. We did around 400 VR demo’s over 2 days on our stand, keeping our seats filled the majority of the time. It was a wonderful experience that enabled us to show the amazing possibilities of VR technology to the public and reward us with their positive reactions. Check out Connect Expo 2015 here...
by Sandra Mexa | Apr 24, 2015 | News
Panedia Google views account keeps growing at bigger numbers, now more than 1+ Million a week. We keep proudly looking at this numbers as they mean recognition for our efforts and people’s appreciation of our vast and good content. Check out Melbourne, Southbank here – Panedia Google Street...
by Sandra Mexa | Mar 18, 2015 | News
Panedia Google views account number just jumped 3 million views! This was due to technical problems on Google statistics counting over the last months, that were just solved and reflect now the real number on Panedia page. We are so happy that so many people are enjoying and viewing our work and that is pure motivation for our future and current jobs. Check out Fortescue Bay, Tasmania here – Panedia Google Street...
by Panedia Team | Mar 13, 2015 | News
‘GOLD Coast specialist panoramic film company Panedia is a world beater’ makes the title of an article in our local newspaper. Nice focus for our work that finally gets some local recognition. Check out Panedia at Gold Coast Bulletin – Gold Coast...