IPIX® Interactive Studio™ FAQ: Section 1 - Product Questions

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1.1. What is the Interactive Studio?

The Interactive Studio is a brand new, completely redesigned, 360° Panoramic photography solution. Tailored to photographers of all levels, the Interactive Studio is the singular tool needed to create high quality images that capture an entire scene, quickly and easily.

1.2. What are the markets for the IPIX Interactive Studio?

The IPIX Interactive Studio will make 360° panoramic photography accessible and easy for a broad range of users. Examples of those who will benefit from 360° panoramic photography include:

• Entrepreneurs looking for a unique technology-based service business to start
• Photography Enthusiasts
• Marketing and Creative Agencies
• Commercial / Corporate employees who use photography as part of doing business:

Real Estate agents and brokers

Insurance agents and appraisers

Facilities managers

Police & Fire rescue

• Professionals who create high-value photography:

Professional photographers

Creative agencies

The markets that can benefit from 360° panoramic photography are many. They include:

AEC / Facilities	Automotive	Corporate Promotion
Corporate Training	Commercial Real Estate	Education
Engineering Services	Entertainment	Publishing Online / Print
Government	Law Enforcement	Medical Services
Multimedia Provider	Travel and Hospitality	Residential Real Estate

1.3. What features does the IPIX Interactive Studio have?

All-in-one interactive image creation - Stitch, edit, and enhance your images all in one tool

Open file support - Supports a broad range of panoramic photography file types allowing for interoperability with a diverse range of 3rd party multimedia tools

Batch capability - Work on one or many images with a single integrated workflow

Open & flexible licensing terms - Single-user, Multi-user Site, or Photographer Network licensing options

Plug-in architecture - Expanded functionality to be added over time, including 3rd party features

Open viewing - Output to a broad range of file types, allowing you to choose the viewer you like best

1.4. What types of plug-ins are supported?

The Interactive Studio supports several broad types of plug-ins. Included are:

Input - Input Plug-ins open up files on your computer's hard drive and load the image data inside the file into a format that can be used by the IPIX Interactive Studio. The Interactive Studio supports two types of inputs: Sets of images to be stitched and previously stitched panoramic images.

Stitching - Stitching Plug-ins transform your source images into panoramic images. The resulting panorama can be output into a wide variety of file formats. Both automatic and manual stitchers are supported.

Editing Tools - These tools offer a simple and elegant way to polish up your panoramic images. Paint Tools can be used to make quick touch-ups within the image. You can also apply standard image Filters such as brightness, hue, contrast, or levels.

Properties - Panoramic images can have a variety of properties. Property Plug-ins provide a means of specifying this data.

Output - Output Plug-ins save your panoramic images in a broad range of file formats. Each plug-in includes controls for selecting output image resolution and compression level.

1.5. What are the available configurations of the IPIX Interactive Studio?

The software configurations offered will include:

IPIX Interactive Studio Essentials Pack (Single User) - The IPIX Interactive Studio Essentials Pack includes everything you need to create stunning 360° photos using a fisheye lens. The software includes everything you need to create 1-, 2-, or 3-shot 360° photos. The IPIX Interactive Studio Essentials Pack includes a Single-User Annual Seat License and is available for $899 USD. Annual renewal pricing is $699 USD.

IPIX Interactive Studio Enhancer Pack (Single User) - The IPIX Interactive Studio Enhancer Pack includes is a major step up in across different Panoramic and 360° photo formats. In addition to all the features of the Essentials Pack, the Enhancer Pack includes support for a broad range of standard and proprietary image formats. The Enhancer Pack also includes integral editing tools that let you streamline your workflow and save time when you have a large number of 360° photos to create. The IPIX Interactive Studio Essentials Pack includes a Single-User Annual Seat License and is available for $1799 USD. Annual renewal pricing is $999 USD.

1.6. Will IPIX be supporting Mac OS X and Windows?

The IPIX Interactive Studio is available for both Windows 98SE or later and for Mac OS X. All features are available on both platforms.

1.7. What cameras and lenses will be supported by the IPIX Interactive Studio?

Today, the IPIX Interactive Studio, V1.3 now supports the full range of fisheye lenses available on the market. The REALVIZ Fisheye Stitcher Extension opens up support for the wide range commercial off-the-shelf primary fisheye lenses previously not supported directly by IPIX.

We still support in our standard package (Essential and Enhancer) a growing selection of top-tier digital cameras that support our traditional 2- and 3-shot full circle fisheye capture. In the near term, we will expand support to almost any camera with the introduction of the PhotoVista Plug-in Extension to the IPIX Interactive Studio. Stay tuned for more details.

1.8. What panoramic image formats are supported in the IPIX Interactive Studio?

The IPIX Interactive Studio will support one of the broadest ranges of Panoramic and 360° Panoramic imaging formats. Included will be support for the following.

Input	Description	Input Format	Output Format
Equirectangular Projection	A commonly used, Full-360º format	Yes	Yes
QuickTime Cubic Panorama	Apple's QuickTime cubic format.	Yes	Yes
Cube Faces	6 separate cube face files.	Yes	No
IPIX Images	Proprietary IPIX Image format. Works with IPIX Standalone, ActiveX, Netscape, and Java Applet Viewers.	Yes	Yes
.ipx	Now the one and only IPIX image format.	Yes	Yes
.ipp	Legacy Editable IPIX format for use with the IPIX Photoshop plug-in. Cube strips can now be created directly for editing in Photoshop.	Yes	No
.ipa	Legacy IPIX Archive format. Uncompressed .ipx files can now be created for archive purposes.	Yes	No
.gbu	Legacy IPIX Archive format. This format was replaced by the .ipa format (see above).	Yes	No
.bub	Legacy IPIX Image format. This format was replaced by the .ipx format.	Yes	No
Cube Strip	Contains 6 cube faces oriented to present four of them as a continuous segment. This format is useful for performing touch-ups in standard image editing software packages.	Yes	Yes
Rectilinear Image	Flat, non-wide angle image.	Yes	Yes
X3D / VRML	Virtual Reality Modeling Language and Web 3D Consortium formats for creating rich, web-based, 3D graphical content	No	Yes
W3D / Shockwave	Macromedia’s de facto standard for creating compelling web-based 3D content.	No	Yes

1.9. What new plug-ins do you have planned in the future?

There is a broad range of plug-ins we plan to offer in the future. Some of these will be offered by IPIX, others will be available from 3rd parties. Our plan is to fully exploit the plug-in architecture to provide you with new and exciting ways to create unique and compelling panoramic photography.

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