Tomb Raider Underworld Stereo 3D Screenshots

Anyone who is interested how stereo 3D gaming may look like:
You can see some Tomb Raider Underworld screenshots by clicking the thumbnail below (still not the same as actually playing the game...). The screenshots are from 3 different levels. Especially at the end, i tried to keep the 'story' intact...
SPOILER WARNING! The screenshots will reveal some key scenes of the game!

(Click thumbnail for images)

Meidling Hauptstrasse, Vienna

Pentax Spotmatic F, Takumar 55mm/1.8, Ilford HP5

Naschmarkt, Vienna

Film is still not dead

At least for me. Still more extractable dynamic range than from a FX sensor and i love the look of true film grain...

Vienna river at Unter St. Veit, new bicycle route along the river

Microsoft ICE Update

A new version of Microsoft ICE is available.
I would have reported earlier about it, but one of my data disks crashed and i had to restore from backup (keep in mind: even a simple backup is better than no backup!)...


Here is a selection of fixes and new features that may draw your special attention as they are putting ICE one more step closer to the group of professional panorama creation tools - and in some respect even beyond:

• Panoramas can be created from video input:
  This is not only useful for people without deep knowledge in panorama making (e.g. you don't have to care about nodal point very much), it also allows to create various flavours of "action panoramas" pretty easy.
  The following panorama was created using this video. The result is here - uploaded without any post-processing:
  

• Automatic de-vignetting. IMHO as good as PTGui and Autopano Giga. Only Hugin would beat that quality-wise (but at high calculation cost).
  ...and:
• More robust to corrupt/mis-matching metadata. In fact, ICE is able to beat Autopano Giga in that respect. Please note, however, that this is absolutely necessary as ICE still doesn't allow any manual intervention if pre-alignment plays havoc...
  One of my favourite "test panoramas" - which was unstitchable without massive manual intervention in Autopano Giga (although APG uses the robot metadata for pre-alignment) - went pretty well within the first attempt in ICE. Only the mast on top of the tower had to be postprocessed in Photoshop:

New Uploads on Austria-360

Still looking for a simple-to-use CMS for the Website and finding none, so i persuaded mayself to do one more manual update with some panoramas that are waiting since months to be uploaded:

Carinthia

Koelnbreinsperre

© Robert F. Tobler, http://ray.cg.tuwien.ac.at/rft/

Lower Austria

Private Library, Neunkirchen

© Robert F. Tobler, http://ray.cg.tuwien.ac.at/rft/

Vienna

Reichsbrücke

© Robert F. Tobler, http://ray.cg.tuwien.ac.at/rft/

I. Bezirk, Stephansplatz

I. Bezirk, Graben

I. Bezirk, Hohe Bruecke / Tiefer Graben

I. Bezirk, Ankeruhr, Hoher Markt

I. Bezirk, Judenplatz, Jüdisches Denkmal und Lessing-Statue

I. Bezirk, Steindlgasse

I. Bezirk, Schulhof, Uhrenmuseum

I. Bezirk, Tuchlauben

XIV. Bezirk, Otto Wagner 'Leopold'-Kirche


XIV. Bezirk, Otto Wagner 'Leopold'-Kirche


XIV. Bezirk, Otto Wagner 'Leopold'-Kirche

Ars Electronica 2010

I did tell about the Stereo 3D Images from the 2010 Event, but i forgot to advertize the panoramas which are online at Austria-360:

Click image to go to the Ars 2010 panoramas

Above snippet depicts one of my favourite exhibited projects, a robotic telepresence system which - despite of the weird appearance of the doll - actually works. It is called "Telenoid" by the already very famous scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro.

The (almost) final solution for my battery charging problems...

I have a countless number of cameras and electronic devices lying around at home with an equal number of differing batteries. Some devices even came with no charger at all and use a dedicated power supply to charge the battery.
So, if you're travelling, your luggage is crammed with cables and chargers of which one usually turns out to be the wrong one and another missing.


Incidentally i found the almost perfect solution for this problem at a local dealer. It's called "Hähnel Unipal" - a charger with two freely adjustable contacts to fit any Li-Ion or Li-Po battery within the 3,6/7,2 Volt range. Plus, it offers an USB outlet to charge USB-powered devices and it can load AA & AAA batties. The only thing i'm missing is a CR123 charging option  ;-)


A special tip: If you have problems with retracted contacts, just rotate the battery and charge it upright...