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One hundred years later, Washington D.C.'s new 32,500 square meter Udvar-Hazy Center was opened, housing 82 aircraft and numerous space artifacts, engines and small objects amoung ten major thematic displays. Among the notable aircraft on display is a Concorde, donated by Air France, a Boeing 307 Stratoliner and the SR-71 Blackbird, an American spy plane that holds the record as the fastest aircraft ever built.

In preparation of the opening of the $311 million Udvar-Hazy Center, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum had to assemble, clean and move over 200 artifacts to the new facility, providing a rare opportunity for the Smithsonian to photograph a large portion of its collection. The Museum chose Apple’s QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) technology to create immersive panoramic movies of artifact interiors and exteriors. This is great news for aviation enthusiasts as the QTVR movies provide virtual access inside the cockpits of historic aircraft, giving them an advantage over Museum visitors who cannot physically go inside the aircraft.

Over 100 aircraft and spacecraft were photographed during the first eight month phase of this project; objects like the Lockheed SR-71, Piper J-3 Cub, and Lockheed Vega "Winnie Mae" were photographed inside and out in extensive detail before they were placed behind exhibitry or hung high above the floor. Custom platforms were constructed to rotate large aircraft 360-degrees while individual images were taken of the object from every 10-degree angle to create the QTVR movies.

Internet surfers can view QTVR movies on the Museum’s website from the comfort of home (QTVRs are currently available to view with more to come) or on interactive kiosks at the Udvar-Hazy Center. But the project needs financial help to continue photographing QTVR movies of objects. Twenty more aircraft and dozens of space objects are moving over to the new Center in 2004, with many more scheduled to move there trhough 2007. If sufficient funding is not found by summer 2004, the interiors of many of these objects will not be photographed and they will be inaccessible for years to come.

Here are some examples of the aircraft the QTVRA project has photographed and are available on its website:

The Boeing 307 Stratoliner was introduced to fly on TWA’s transcontinental routes in 1940, one year after Howard Hughes became the principle stockholder of Trans World Airlines. The Stratoliner incorporated new technology, such as a pressurized fuselage, that was able to keep internal air at a constant and comfortable pressure, a marked improvement for transatlantic flights of the time. Nine Stratoliners were built for TWA and Pan American Airlines at a cost of $315,000 each (the Pan American fleet were called the Clipper Rainbow, the Clipper Comet and the Clipper Flying Cloud). In 1941 the TWA fleet was transferred to the Army Air Transport Command; most of these survived WWII and went on to serve in the Vietnam War. One Stratoliner remains in the collection of the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

The objective of the 1965 Gemini VII mission was to conduct a 14-day mission to evaluate the effects of extended space flight on the crew, along with experiments to evaluate lightweight pressure suits and spacecraft re-entry capability.

The SR-71, unofficially known as the “Blackbird”, was a long-range advanced strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed from the Lockheed A-12 and YF-12A. The first flight of an SR-71 took place in 1964 and throughout its 24-year career it remained the world’s fastest and highest flying operational aircraft, capable of surveying 100,000 square miles of the earth’s surface per hour from an altitude of 80,000 feet. On July 28, 1976, an SR-71 set two world records for its class: an absolute speed record of 2,193.167 miles per hour and an absolute altitude record of 85,068.997 feet.

Professional photographers Dennis Biela and David Palermo have been shooting the QTVRs and working on their post-production, as well as searching for funding to see the project to completion. We emailed David a few questions about the project:

David, what is your role within the project?

I am one of two primary photographers on the project. My role is to shoot object and interior panoramic cubic movies of each artifact. I also created the background scenes that can be seen in every cubic movie. Currently I am back in California working on obtaining funding for the project.

Aside from in-kind donations of equipment, are you looking for volunteers to donate their time in a professional capacity?

Volunteers are currently removing backgrounds from object movie stills and helping with the shoots. Some are Museum employees and the rest are volunteers outside the museum who help out a few days per week. The project is not looking for volunteers at this time, but the Smithsonian has a list of interested people that will certainly be called if more help is needed.

How long does it take to photograph and stitch a typical artifact? Can you walk us through an example with the setup/preparation time for an object movie, photographing it, and then stitching it together.

OBJECT MOVIES
We usually start by photographing an artifact as an object movie. The larger the artifact the more time it usually takes due to needing more people to help turn the artifact! Typically it takes about 2-7 people to rotate an artifact. And the artifacts vary greatly in size. Anywhere from a few feet across, such as a hang glider, to objects many feet across and weighing over 12 tons! For the heavier artifacts we move the camera around the artifact rather than rotate it. The heaviest aircraft that we rotated was about 12 tons. The Enola Gay, Concorde, Boeing 707, and a few others could not be moved so we had to walk around them.

Once the aircraft is in position and the lighting set up, it takes about 45 minutes to actually shoot the photos. We start by placing a color wedge on the first shot to assure color accuracy. Then we rotate the aircraft 10° and take a picture for a total of 36 shots.

Once the photography is completed we transfer the images from the camera to the computer where they are converted from RAW format to TIFFS. Then using Adobe Photoshop, we have volunteers remove the background of each shot and fill it in with blue so we can drop a different background in if we choose to. (The aircraft are shot against a blue tarp but it’s not seamless and has to be manually removed in some areas. Unfortunately we had no budget allowing us a giant cove with a perfect background.) Removing the backgrounds can take anywhere from a few hours to all day or longer, depending on the complexity of the artifact.

The next procedure is stitching or, in the case of an object movie, assembling the frames into a QTVR object movie. This takes just a few minutes.

TOTAL TIME FOR OBJECT MOVIE
Photography – 45mins to 1.5 hours
Background removal – 3 – 10 hours
QTVR Object Movie Creation – 30 mins
TOTAL – about 12 hours

PANORAMA (CUBIC) MOVIES
Panorama movies vary depending on the size and complexity of the cockpit. First we light the cockpit using two large soft boxes – one on each side so light floods through the windows. If the cockpit is large we also use smaller lights hidden throughout the cockpit. We use a Bogen or Kaidan head to mount the camera and in some cases we use an automatic head custom built by Corybant West. We then start shooting... For cockpits we always shoot cubic VR movies so the viewer can look up and down as well as from side to side. A total of about 30 images are shot, sometimes more depending on bright areas that need multiple exposures that will later be blended.

TOTAL TIME FOR PANORAMIC (CUBIC) MOVIES
Photography (including lighting)- 1 – 2 hours
Stitching and blending – 2 hours
Window removal to drop outside scene in – 1 hour
Retouching cube faces – 1 hour
Conversion to cubic movie – 30 mins
TOTAL - about 7 hours

Read more about Tools and Techniques here :

What equipment do you use for the shoots?

For all of the photography we use the following equipment:

- Nikon D1x camera, 17-35mm lens
- Canon 1DS, 14mm lens
-Apple Macintosh iMac with capture software to capture the photos to hard disk while shooting object movies.
-Elinchrom power packs and heads
-Bogen/Manfrotto Tripods and QTVR head
-Kaidan QTVR head
-Corybant West automated VR head.
-Lexar – digital compact flash storage

How does the IQTVRA fit into this project?

The IQTVRA has been very supportive and has promoted this project since it first started last year in April. They have also created a promotional video, which can be seen on Apple’s site. We would like to thank IQTVRA for this promotional video.

Do you have an estimate of the amount of money you need to see the project to completion?

The most critical funding need is $200,000 fo fund QTVR work through 2004. Approximately $250,000 will be needed to photograph objects gradually moved to the new Center from 2004-2007. The Museum is interested in photographing obects at the Museum on the Malll eventually and the Smithsonian is determing the logistics and necessary funding required. Any donations are welcome. To make a donation, please contact the project manager, Vicki Portway, at the National Air and Space Museum Interactive Media Division or Lin Ezell in the Museum's Development Office.

By supporting this project, you would help the Museum to:

- Photographically document nearly 80% of the National Collection of aviation and space artifacts.

-Make more information about the National Collection available to the public.

-Create new interactive media for a variety of online and Museum-based educational applications.

-Use new technology for education, outreach and to enhance the visitor experience.

-Extend public outreach beyond the Museum walls to a global audience.

-Better preserve, conserve and restore priceless aviation and space artifacts.

-More effectively engage and educate the public about the significance of aviation and space technology.