3D Cave VR Online

[Steven Johnson]

These folks took 360-degree quicktime VR videos of an entire cave system in Slovenia. You can actually navigate thru the caves, sort of. (You have to have Java and Quicktime installed, I think, and it can be fairly slow to load...)

http://www.burger.si/Jame/KriznaJama/No ... aJama.html

[Rick Brinkman]

DO NOT GO HERE!!!!

I highly suspect this is where I got a nasty virus. It gets into Internet Explorer and screws up your computer. Lots of fake virus warnings, errror messages etc.

The site said I needed to update my Active X to see it, and I foolishly did.

If anyone knows how to fix this, I'd really appreciate it.

[NZcaver]

DO NOT GO HERE!!!!

I highly suspect this is where I got a nasty virus. It gets into Internet Explorer and screws up your computer. Lots of fake virus warnings, errror messages etc.

The site said I needed to update my Active X to see it, and I foolishly did.

If anyone knows how to fix this, I'd really appreciate it.

Really? I checked it out a couple of days ago, and then again just now. Really neat site, by the way. Awesome!

I got prompted with the "Click to run an Active X control on this webpage" box, but nothing about updating. I clicked OK and it worked fine for me (running IE7 on my laptop).

That looks to be part of a major tourism-type website for Slovenia. Good quality stuff. If it does spread viruses, I would be very surprised. It doesn't seem to have caused me any problems.

[Rick Brinkman]

Well, what I DID see was cool too.

It's just that this was the only site that I could remember going to, that could cause a problem.

If your IE is still working, I got it from somewhere else...

[Steven Johnson]

DO NOT GO HERE!!!!

I highly suspect this is where I got a nasty virus. It gets into Internet Explorer and screws up your computer. Lots of fake virus warnings, errror messages etc.

The site said I needed to update my Active X to see it, and I foolishly did.

If anyone knows how to fix this, I'd really appreciate it.

Good warning. (I went there using Mac version Firefox, so ActiveX doesn't enter the equation...)

[Rick Brinkman]

Well, I went there with Firefox. Maybe I got it somewhere else. I just don't really know. I just thought that this was the only 'weird' site I had been to.

But man, where ever I got it, it was bad.

I THINK I finally got it... Took 6-7 different anti-virus/spyware/adware to get it. I'm still scared to reboot and see for sure....

[Bostjan]

I have noticed that post today. This web site is mine and is displaying my caving work. The posted link is to the visualization of the public accessible part of the cave. I have posted today the new updated area which is separated by the over 70 m deep siphon. It is about 2 km long and closed to the public - highly protected cave system. Many years of work for only 2 km...
The web site is safe as it is part of the Academic research network. The old version was with java and now I am programming in flash.

Bostjan

[Ralph E. Powers]

Well, I went there with Firefox. Maybe I got it somewhere else. I just don't really know. I just thought that this was the only 'weird' site I had been to.

But man, where ever I got it, it was bad.

I THINK I finally got it... Took 6-7 different anti-virus/spyware/adware to get it. I'm still scared to reboot and see for sure....

I've been using Avira Antivir and AVG running simultaneously and while my browsing is a bit slower than it could be they've been awfully good at catching nasty stuff... if one misses the other gets it. You might want to try getting CCleaner and see if that doesn' t help as well.

It's worth the money to invest in the best anti-virus/spyware/adware you can afford. There are nasty stuff floating around waiting to latch on so better safe than sorry.

As to the site... neato-mosquito! It didn't take long for it to load (for me anyway) but it's something I'd like to see with wild caves. That'd be an awesome thing for armchair cavers.

[Footleg]

I have been a fan of this website for a long time. In my opinion one of the most impressive cave photography exhibits on the internet and truly inspiring. Great to hear from the author themself. I would be very interested to hear more about the techniques used to take these fantastic VR panoramas. For example do you light then entire scene for the 360 shoot in every frame? Or light only the section of the scene which the camera is pointing at for each capture? How many frames are you taking to complete a 360 panorama? What focal length lens? What camera? How long did each panorama take to shoot?

[Bostjan]

It is fine to hear a nice comment. I wrote some lines about the technique in other topic ( http://www.burger.si/DOGODKI/2009_LedLenserX21/seznam_eng.html ). The development of the technique was with the progress of the technology of cameras and even the light sources. I started with the light painting with the film camera (Nikon F3) but the result was very bad as I had no control over the output photo. I tried multirow panoramas for spherical in the year 2000 as 3 Mpx camera at that time was with not enough pixels for single row spherical and the lightening was very problematic with multirow so I continued with linear 12 mm lense and cylindrical VR panoramas. Now the process of 'photosampling' is much easier - I usually take 6 shots with 8mm Sigma on DX or shaved Nikorr 10.5 mm on FX (Nikon). About the new torch please read in the article following the previous link.
As an example: I was in a 450 long cave which entry is a 34 m (~ 100 feet) deep shaft, I shot 5 VRs in 4 hours including climbing up an d down and have published the subterranean tour today: http://www.burger.si/Jame/LogaskaJama/uvod_ENG.html.

:) Bostjan

[Jeff Bartlett]

wonderful!

[uglyoldbob]

I have a similar project going on. I don't have the spherical panoramas linked together into a tour yet, but you can check out my progress. http://pano.doorsphotography.com/qtvr and http://www.doorsphotography.com/Landscapes/Panoramas/9247646_aE58R/1/#679093585_pa5tq-A-LB

[Bostjan]

Uglyoldbob (lol..what a nick name)... that is very cool.