News on Panedia
important information, events or milestones
Cruising in 360 wins silver at the Sydney Design Awards
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 content.
Qantas Safety Conference
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 Facebook
Monaco 360 Première
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 Siebert.
How Did We Do?
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
1/4 Billion views on Google Maps
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
Panedia features in Gold Coast Bulletin
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 experience, Panedia is one of the most experienced VR companies on the planet: we have been producing amazing VR content since the 90’s, that’s over 16 years. www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au
Step onboard your cruise ship before you step onboard
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 Advise
Play VR App
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 for it to work on your phone. This also allows you to launch the app directly from your phone, which is much quicker than going through the Oculus store. We’ve set up a method for getting your ID to us on our website, and we’ll update the app every day or 2 and let you know it’s ready for you to use. So have at it, and let us know what you think.
200 M views on Google Maps
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 Maps.
Coral Bleaching Images at National Geographic
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
10 Years Of VR
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 we have developed Google Underwater Streetview, producing more underwater VR content than has ever existed before, enabling hundreds of millions of people to take virtual dives in our precious oceans. In addition to the content we produce, we’ve also built multiple VR CMS’s for ourselves and clients like the University of Queensland and Underwater Earth. Starting with little old me, a Nikon D200 + 10.5mm fisheye, a 360Precision panorama head, a lot of great ideas and even more grit we’ve managed to build one of the world’s foremost VR companies. We’ve been extremely fortunate to have very talented people join Panedia over the years, enabling us to consistency produce a quality and quantity of content that few can match. In recent years we’ve also been producing Virtual Reality experiences using 360video that are universally praised by people who know VR. I could go on for many pages singing the praises of our wonderful Panedia people, while telling stories of the amazing clients we’ve worked with, but I’ll stop now, and say to all who’ve been involved in our story in any way, thank you. Really, if you’re reading this, and we’ve ever met, talked on the phone, skyped, emailed or facebooked thank you for being part of our life. So much has happened at Panedia in the past decade, it’s been an exciting, crazy, wild and satisfying ride. As we start […]
100 Million Panorama Views on Google Maps
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 Maps
Panoramas has inspiration for painters
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. Pinturayartistas
BMNet.us
Interview with Aaron Spence. A short glance at Panedia and its work. Panedia BMNet.us
30 Million Google Maps Views
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 View.
Nepal before and after the earthquake
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 Times
Connect Expo 2015
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 –
Over 20 Million Views
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 View.
16+ Million Google Views
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 View.
Gold Coast Bulletin article about Panedia
‘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 Bulletin.
13+ Million Google Views
Panedia number of views keeps going up now to 13+M. We intend to continue to upload good and beautiful content on Google Views for letting the world appreciate this fabulous locations. Check out Kings Park in Perth, Australia here – Panedia Google Street View.
Panedia features at the Daily Mail
The Daily Mail published an article on our work: ‘The stunning panoramic pictures taken by an Australian company for Google street view…and they’ve been seen by more than 12 MILLION people’. It is always good see our efforts being recognized. Check out Panedia at Daily Mail here – Daily Mail.
12+ Million Google Views
Another milestone crossed has our number of views increased to 12+M. We are so happy that people keep enjoying the images of those beautiful places and explore them through the Google platform. Check out Homer Tunnel, New Zealand here – Panedia Google Street View.
11+ Million Google Views
Being this the first day of the new year, it is always good to start with good news… We have now achieved 11+M views on our Google Views account. This is an incentive to keep on working hard and passionately on 360 degree photography content.
10+ Million Google Views
We’ve just crossed the major milestone, and as far as we know are the first people to do it. 10 Million panorama views on Google Views. As much as we love producing beautiful panoramic imagery just for the love of the medium, it’s great to know that millions of people are finding our art useful. They experience places they will perhaps never see, or are maybe inspired to travel to a far off land. Check out Milford Sound, New Zeland here – Panedia Google Street View
9+ Million Google Views
Another milestone reached today, when we achieved 8+ million views on Google Views. Google recently added still photos to what was once the exclusive domain of 360 panoramas, so we’ve started creating still images from our panoramas, and adding them to the service. I am loving the results, check them out on our Google Views link below. Can be seen here in Panedia Google Street View
8+ Million Google Views
Another milestone reached today, when we achieved 8+ million views on Google Views. Google recently added still photos to what was once the exclusive domain of 360 panoramas, so we’ve started creating still images from our panoramas, and adding them to the service. I am loving the results, check them out on our Google Views link below. Can be seen here in Panedia Google Street View.
7+ Million Google Views
Today we reached 7+ million views on Google Views. We started publishing still photos now and uploaded about 93 photos to add to the 1529 photo spheres that we already shared on our account on Google Views. We really like the final result with great perspectives and showing the artistic side of panoramas on this still images. Can be seen here in Panedia Google Street View.
6+ Million Google Views
Today we got 6+ million views on Google Views. We have now a collection of 1498 panoramas fairly spread over the globe. Can be seen here in Panedia Google Street View.
5+ Million Google Views
We are happy to have reached 5+ million number of Google views. And we are glad that people are enjoying our work and proud on our efforts and achievements. Thanks to all Panedia team for their dedication and support. Just released a 136 photo spheres from London, adding up to a total of 1360 panoramas on our account. Can be seen here in Panedia Google Maps.
4+ Million Google Views
Another milestone achieved as we reached 4+ million views on Google Views. Just added two tours: Las Vegas and Los Angeles to our collection in Google. We currently have 1174 photo spheres to share with the world. Can be seen here in Panedia Google Street View.
Tropicana, Las Vegas
These pictures were taken during this year IVRPA conference in Las Vegas, in a reception sponsored by Google in the pool area of Tropicana hotel. The atmosphere was quite nice and colorful and there was a nice screen exhibition with great panoramic images. Panedia Google Street View.
2+ Million Google Views
Another milestone achieved today with 2+ million views on Google Views. At this point we have 985 panoramas there and going up. The last content that we just added was the London panoramas with 105 photo spheres in total. Can be seen here in Panedia Google Street View.
1+ Million Google Views
Today we reached 1+ million views on Google Views. We shared 707 panoramas in this platform and we are happy that people can virtually go to all this amazing places just at the distance of a click…or two. Can be seen here in Panedia Google Street Views.
Panedia on Google Views
We have just published our first panoramas on Google Views. This is a great platform to publish our work since it can be easily accessed and viewed worldwide. Our first Panos on Google Views are Moran Falls and Lisbon Rossio Square which are very nice as a start, but we intend to publish much more content on our account for the next upcoming months. Panedia Google Street View
The 7 Year Itch
The illustrious blog your eyes now behold began with a bang whimper 7 years ago today. I started out on my own believing there’s got to be a better way to produce & display panoramic content… today we have a growing team of 7, producing world renowned projects. It has been a hell of a ride. During the past years Michelle and I have put everything on the line repeatedly to build Panedia. We’ve sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into developing the business, at one stage selling our first home to enable us to continue growing. I don’t regret giving up our home for a second*, as I LOVE what I do, I LOVE the business we’ve built, I LOVE the work we produce and the people I produce it with with. I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, but I wouldn’t change a thing. (Well… just a few things.) Along the way we’ve produced more than 15,000 terrestrial panoramas, and over 55,000 underwater panoramas. We’ve worked alongside ‘Ma & Pa’ businesses, charities helping our communities like Mater and RSL, all the way up to the big leagues with the Catlin Seaview Survey, Tourism Queensland and Google among many others. (Check the latest underwater count here at the Catlin Global Reef Record.) Of course the blog wasn’t the start of the work and company that became Panedia, that story goes back another year to 2006, (or to 1999 when I started panoramic photography or to 1987 when I started photography) but it was the first time I posted regular content produced using the new systems I had begun developing. The early blog posts also lead to many contacts throughout the country and a couple of new clients, some of which I continue to work with today. The blog grew in fits and starts… without a real focus on who the reader was. There were very long periods with no posts and the odd blog hacking… we had amazing SEO value for various drugs at one point. So over the past couple of weeks we’ve given the blog a fresh coat of paint, started updating the old posts and added in a great many new posts, covering some of what we’ve been up to. Moving forward we plan to post most of our public projects as they go live, and showcase some of our favourite work, be it personal or commercial. There may even be the odd technical production post, commentary or review showing up here. The ‘7 Year Itch’ is psychological term which suggests that happiness in a relationship declines after year seven. I can say without hesitation my happiness in relationship to Panedia only continues to grow. With that I highly look forward to the next 7 years with my team of outstanding experts, the projects we have lined up for this year, and the plans we have for the future. Stay tuned… there is MUCH MORE TO COME. Which brings me to our featured panorama above… shot in […]
Epson International Pano Awards
Once again I am judging the EPSON International Pano Awards, along with some legendary pano photographers. I enjoy this process immensely, my only wish is for more time to spend up to a day, marinating in the fantastic work the panorama photographers submit. http://www.thepanoawards.com/
Holiday Goddess Guide
Our Panoramas used to experience Centre Place in Melbourne. Holiday Goddess Guide
Panedia article on APC mag
Article on APC magazine about our high quality panoramas. APC Mag
5000+ Mapped Virtual Tours
5052 Virtual Tours are now online at Panedia. I’d been planning to post at 4000, then 4500, but before I’ve had a chance, we’ve hit 5000. I’ve been shooting in Byron Bay, and Sydney. While Rick has been all over the place. Shooting heaps of panos within an hour or 2 of Melbourne. We also have every intersection + a lot more in the Melbourne City Grid, plus we have audio for each panorama there. And we’ve added a new size of panorama to the map…almost double the previous largest size….while we’ve added auto panorama sizing based on your browser window size as well. We’ve also started shooting aerial panoramas in Canberra at the recent Balloon festival. Watch this space, there’s more to come on that subject. I’m off to Sydney again in an hour for the Google Developer day tomorrow, plus I’ll shoot a lot more Sydney for Panedia. I’m planning to shoot northern beaches over the next week. I’m also hoping to attend the Apple store opening on the 19th of June. I’ll leave you with this fireworks pano (complete with audio) from ‘Cracker Night’ at Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast 2 weeks ago. Cracker Night – Surfers Paradise
3500+ Mapped Virtual Tours
3513 Virtual Tours are now online at Panedia. With hundreds more in the pipeline, 4000 should be coming up soon. I’ve been busy stitching panos from Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia. Panos I shot back in December that haven’t been prepped until now. Among those panos are amazing huge termite mounds and waterfalls in Litchfield National Park about 90 minutes drive outside of Darwin, & the Aviation Museum near the Darwin Airport. Here’s a view inside the wheel bay of a B-52 bomber at the Aviation Museum. The B-52 is the centerpiece of the museum taking up much of the total floor area.
3000+ Virtual Tours
We hit a big milestone yesterday, 3000 virtual tours. We should have hit it a few months ago, when I finished the panos I shot in the Northern Territory, but I haven’t finished them yet. Instead I was at www.easterfest.com.au on the weekend and shot another 75 panos there, taking our total to just over 3000. So much has been going on over the last couple of months that I can’t begin to explain it all, suffice to say, many new announcements & sites will be forthcoming over the next short while. We also have hundreds more panos in the pipeline, so the 4000 pano milestone will be coming up soon.
Welcome Google Maps Mania Readers.
Skip to the latest Destination. This blog is about showing Virtual Tours from various destinations. But in honour of being featured on the illustrious Google Maps Mania Blog (which I read religiously) I’ve done a quick ‘Best Of’ so passers by have an instant overview. BTW, I’ll be in San Francisco from the 12th to the 24th of June to attend the IVRPA International Virtual Tour Conference (this year hosted at UC Berkeley, by the legendary lads that run the World Wide Panorama events) so if anyone wants to invite me to lunch (hint – Google employees), to hang out, or do some ‘photo walking’ (hint – Thomas Hawk) drop me a line, I’d love to meet up & shoot some Hi rez, georeferenced virtual tours with audio Enough talk already, onto the BEST OF according to me. (Click an image to view the blog entry & virtual tour, & not all panos have audio.) Broken Hill, New South Wales. Hobart, Tasmania. Gold Coast, Queensland. (My Home Town) Bicheno, Tasmania. Sons Of Korah, AGMF (Australian Gospel Music Festival). Docklands, Melbourne, Victoria. Stanley, Tasmania.
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