PanoVolo 1.6.0 released

[PanoVolo]

A new version of PanoVolo - the panorama stitching tool dedicated to drone photography -has been released.



Main changes in this version

• Built-in interactive photo sphere viewer. You can now view your fully spherical panoramas right after stitching in the built in interactive viewer with rotation and zoom controls.
• New zoom controls for all viewers - panorama, review, 3D map, with gesture zoom and pinch zoom on touch screens.
• Preliminary support for stitching of panoramas shot with drone zoom (70 mm) cameras, such those in Air3 and Mavic3Pro. Note that the final panorama width is limited to 32000 px.

Full list of changes: Panovolo 1.6.0 released with interactive photo sphere viewer : Panorama Stitching Tool for Drone Photography

PanoVolo 1.6 is a free upgrade for all current PanoVolo users on Windows and macOS. A 30-day trial is available upon request: Get PANOVOLO : Panorama Stitching Tool for Drone Photography

 

[Hummingbird.UAV]

Doesn't seem to do a very good job at the top of 360° panos.

 

[PanoVolo]

Hi @Hummingbird.UAV

are you referring to the black area at the top of pano or something else? The black area is the part of the sphere that drone does not capture due to the gimbal tilt limit. Panovolo 1.7 will have an ability to fill it with some fake data.

 

[Hummingbird.UAV]

When I look at the 360 pianos on your website straight up the area is unblended, looks a bit like a cone with side lighting.

 

[PanoVolo]

that's exactly what it is - there is a hole in zenith that drone leaves because it does not shoot straight up. You can close it to a different degree with PS context aware fill, or may be solid color or gradient fill, or by moving a couple of images as described below, but it's only patching over the missing data, not a perfect solution.

Post in thread 'Comparing panorama stitching software' Comparing panorama stitching software

 

[Hummingbird.UAV]

DJI's mini 3 and mini 4 shoot panos with a smooth vertex. Panoramastitcher.com on my Mac creates a smooth vertex with 18772x9386 dimensions. Much larger than the 12000x6000 stitched by the drone.
Check out this link to the panos I have shot over the last six years. The early ones have a fake skyfill as they were shot with drones that could not shoot up. The end ones are from the mini 3 & 4 and have a nicely filled vertical area.
Hawai'i 360° Panos

 

[PanoVolo]

Great panos, @Hummingbird.UAV , but I can assure you mini3 does not cover the entire sphere and leave a rectangular hole in zenith. Here's mini3 pano stitched in PtGUI with the hole plainly visible;


Here's the same pano and hole in PanoVolo:


So my guess is panoramastitcher auto-fills this hole (and does a very good job at covering it)

 

[Hummingbird.UAV]

You are correct. I get the same result when using Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE). I solved this by shooting one extra image in portrait mode at the highest camera angle. The rectangle is then filled in. It works 90% of the time.

 

[PanoVolo]

yes this is def a nice trick and I wish DJI would do this automatically. Another possibility for them is to shoot 3 images near zenith 120 deg apart, I'm pretty sure it would reduce the hole to nothing or almost nothing at the expense of 1 extra image per pano - 36 instead of 35 images.

 

[Hummingbird.UAV]

The portrait shot is the first image I take then switch to panorama mode and shoot the rest. The camera automatically rotates to landscape mode.

 

[PanoVolo]

right, what I meant it would be wonderful if DJI panoramas automatically did what you do semi-manually with the extra frame.