[A SIMPLE WAY TO SERVE STILL DOUGHNUTS] posted March 28, 2009

Even when using a single type of annular lens (panoramamic optical device or single-shot mirror) such as 0-360.com's 0-360 Panoramic Optic™, several factors including the degrees of elevation and depression as well as the size and position of the cropping area will vary not only on the length of your extension tube but on the type and model of the image capturing device you use. Among those factors, the elevation and depression, i.e. the span of image projection or the maximum value of vertical field of view tends to be discounted, resulting in poor linearity when showing a recreated rectilinear view of real shapes of objects.
What we exhibit this time is a convenient approach to accommodate each doughnut image configuring an optimized cropping and projection for it, by using our new on-line tool named "PanoConfigDoughnutFlash", which is a Flash-based Web application capable of reading a jpg, png, or bmp image allowing you to easily obtain a series of XML statements to be used with our Flash-based panorama viewer; "PanoDoughnutFlash".

The approach is comprised of the following steps:

1. Capture a doughnut image. (example)
2. Download PanoDoughnutFlash_v20.zip and unzip it onto an appropriate folder/directory. (example)
3. Open the folder/directory named "template" under the unzipped folder/directory. (example)
4. Copy the captured doughnut image into the "template" folder/directory. (example)
5. Run PanoConfigDoughnutFlash. (example) (*Note 1)
6. Click on the "Open new doughnut" button.(example)
7. Select your image and click "open" button in the "select file..." dialogue window. (example)
8. Click on the "View doughnut" button. (example)
9. Adjust cropping area using two yellow handles and a red handle. (example)
10. Click on the "View rectilinear" button and adjust projections, vertical limits and others. (example)
11. Select the XML statements at the bottom of the tool windows and copy them to clipboard. (example)
12. Go back to the "template" folder/directory and open "your_xml.xml" using Notepad. (example) (*Note 2)
13. Paste the XML statements into "your_xml.xml" between the <play_objects> tags. (example)
14. Save "your_xml.xml" and select "your_html.html" in the "template" folder/directory. (example)
15. Click "your_html.html" to run the doughnut viewer; PanoDoughnutFlash_v20. (example)
16. Make sure your doughnut image is shown as expected.
17. Upload all the files in the "template" folder/directory to your Web server. (example)

(*Note 1) Flash Player version 10 or higher is required to run PanoConfigDoughnutFlash.

(*Note 2) Whatever type of text editor can be used provided that it can save a file in UTF-8 encoded.

Have fun playing with PanoConfigDoughnutFlash!