Please, can you tell us about your general background?
I'm living in Russian remote, in the center of Siberia, on the coast of this artificial sea. Here it's sometimes so boring in the evenings that the only entertainments are panorama player's creations and VRMAG's interviews...I'm 29 years old. I have master's degree in math/programming. I have a girlfriend, she is a glamour photographer.

When and why did you get involved in the panoramic imaging industry/community ? Can you tell us about the history of FPP ?
FPP was created accidentally as an example for another of my projects, a 3D minesweeper. By that time I knew already about panoramas because I have that perilous disease (you know, when at first you are buying reflex camera, then you get one more lens, and then suddenly you're buying a new camera and a couple of perfect fix lenses...as far as I know, this illness can not be cured). So, I thought it could have been useful for some other photo geeks. By that time (a little more than a year ago) it was the only panorama player based on Flash (and still is -other Flash product are mostly "swf file creators" or "other format to swf convertor"). The player provides a possibility to make your own layouts, designs, navigations, effects, plugins (these guys know what I mean). I will work to make the player's customization even easier. I promise.
A lot of people ask me for some simple tool, actually they want yet another "swf creator" based on FPP, some GUI with a couple of big and clear buttons. I can answer: you will get it even without my desire. Yes, the player allows to do anything, including other players and tools creation. Now I have 5 requests from people who want to build custom GUIs for my player...(for example: Flashificator.com. And I want to finish my own "swf creator" after Adobe finally releases the AIR framework. This should be cool.

The development of the player is typical "casual development". I have no strict roadmap or timeline, I have only my own vision and long lists of asked features from the forum and emails. But there are some many interesting possibilities and features: controlling the panorama rotation without mouse and keyboard, adding Zoomify functionality, new interactive distorted hotspots, video panoramas...
I should publicly say sorry to all my users, because I didn't describe some ready features in the last version of the player (actually it supports custom panorama formats including cyphered panoramic images and custom AS3 transition effects). I will publish the new documentation and examples later. I promise.

What has been/or is today the response of the industry/community ?
The response was really unexpected for me: there were people appearing which knew how to use my panorama player better than me! They invented some tricks and effects that I had never imagined. I know several people on the forum which understand the internal language well, that I will ask them if I have problems with some effect creation. This helps me to understand two simple truths: the creation and the usage are very different things and that the base of honor is meekness.

Do you have numbers you can share about distribution/usage of FPP ?
No big secret here: the first license was sold 15 months ago; as for today I sold 1291 personal licenses (greetings to Darrell from Nevada for license number 1291!). Judging by number of references to my site (from context menu of the player) the total number of sites using my player is 2500-3000 and maybe about 1000 offline panorama presentations (yes, some FPP's users develop sites in a short span of time and earn a great deal of money thanks to it. I often receive mails where they thank me for the great product).

This is real pleasure for me. Yes, FPP is not my best project from a commercial point of view (you know these simple slideshows and charts Flash components always makes more money). But I don't want to change the license procedure (I hate these fees for every small product's update and a tax for every simple supplement). I would make it freeware probably, but I believe that every good thing should cost some money. Otherwise there is no pleasure to use it; and there is always some trick like: "looks at these 100 wonderful banners and we will give you it for free and this perfect refrigerator's magnet as a bonus!".

What are the most famous sites, or the ones with most traffic that are using FPP ?
The most famous site I think is Viewat.org. The most visited last time I checked is Gillesvidal.com.

Also popular are:
http://www.immersive360.com/
http://easyviewmedia.com/
http://www.eyerevolution.co.uk/
http://zu.hu/
http://vrclub.co.kr/
http://www.virtualtourgroup.com/
http://www.imascope360.com/

All big blog/journal resources give reference traffic from internal pages, like this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/interactives/tokyostories/panos/

With viewat.org you changed the general license, don't you see a potential big loss of profit as consequence ? Why did you do it ?
Good people tell me rational things. Why should I mind against?

On the commercial side, I imagine some companies approached you with the intent to buy FPP, what is your intention in this regard ?
Yes, I have two not very intensive negotiations about this. With one private investor angel and another one, with big enough company based in USA. As for me I would prefer some contemporary big company as Google. Unfortunately they have panorama engines already (Google streets). Probably users can win if I sell it to some company or I will find some investor to build full-scale startup. And probably not. Anyway don't worry, I'm still here and I'm working on it!

What are the future developments we can expect ?
Currently I'm working on new cool hotspot's functionality, you will like it. And simultaneously I build one hardware thing to make some small revolution in panorama creation. ;) It is still unfinished, but I can say that it weights about 1kg, has several electronic components and 1/4'' screw.

And the last thing I want to say: I think Flash panoramas become standard de facto after Flash 10 release (I'm watching Adobe narrowly and I like new possibilities). The player's architecture implies the possibility of easy upgrade to the next version. Player's customers will need to rewrite only a couple of SWF files to upgrade an old project. No parameters changing, no panorama images conversion. And this update will be free for all FPP's customers as usual.

"What do you think about flash panoramic viewers build on API solutions such as papervision3d ?
Why not? I saw 3 or 4 pano engines based on Papervision. The problem is Papervision is too universal. So I can give a good advice to panorama engines creators: use Papervision or any other framework for 3D panorama view on the prototype stage, and then remove all unused code. You will find that you saved 95% of code size and about 50-80% of performance. Also, I want you to notice that 3D calculations in my code are less than 2% of all code lines (you should remember about loading, external parameters, formats transformations, various transitions, working with hotspots, plugins, diverse APIs). So I'm afraid you can save even more time in panorama engine creation, if you take, say, some slideshow engine as a base for your panoramic viewer. ;)

Links:
Flash Panorama Player
Flash Panorama blog