He is a true multi-talent: at the age of 15 he composed Caribbean waltzes. We know him as great actor since it's first role in 1978 "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band", followed by "The Prey", "The Witches of Eastwick", "Addams Family" as Lurch, "Man in Black", just to name a few. In TV, we could enjoy his recurring presence in "Star Trek The Next Generation" as Mr. Homn, "Star Trek Voyager", as well as "Twin Peaks" and "Babylon 5". Carel collaborated on a number of projects of writer/director Rene Daalder. He has done hardware and software development of Virtual Reality systems for many years.

And, the reason why we welcome him on VRMAG is that he is hooked to photographic Virtual Reality. ;-)

He publishes Sphericalpanoramas.com, a great resource for stunning high quality interactive panoramas of the city and state he has lived in the last 30 years, Los Angeles,
and provides professional panoramic photography services through Picturebubbles.com.

Carel kindly agreed to the following interview on how he became a panographer, his views on VR photography and details about one of his most interesting VR projects the "Peter Struycken Digital Paradise" exhibition at the Groninger Museum open until December 2, 2007.

Can you tell us about your background ?

I am a film school graduate, but have always been interested in interactive media. I had a working interactive dancefloor in the early 90s and used to take an interactive system with me whenever I would be invited to a Science Fiction convention (because of a recurring role in Star Trek the Next Generation).

The people on the spaceship Enterprise had something called the "Holodeck" where one could immerse oneself in an environment of one's choice and interact with very real simulacra of people and other lifeforms.
I had made a very primitive version of that. It was a bit like being inside a video game.

The interest in virtual reality waned after the world wide web got started. Of course the web is a very interactive environment in and of itself and I started losing interest in linear storytelling. Video quality on the web was (and is) also not that good and with our current broadband limitations it still takes much too long to download a video. Then, some 3 years ago, I discovered full screen spherical panoramas and was hooked. It is an ideal medium for our current low speed internet and allows one to explore a space interactively in high resolution.

When and why did you decide to move from in front to behind the camera ?

It was more the other way around. I worked for many years behind the camera on various (very) low budget movie projects and gratefully accepted every offer of an acting job, where one actually got paid!

Please tell us more about your most important VR Project?

The most important VR project was the Groninger Museum exhibit of my brother Peter's architectural artworks. It turned out to be a very convincing demonstration of the advantages of our niche medium. Around the time that the curator and my brother were discussing how they were going to show these artworks, I had emailed my brother to tell him we should document his public projects with panoramas, without knowing that he had a major exhibit in the works. The museum was a bit unsure at first how this was going to work. But after I showed them the first batch, they became very enthusiastic and decided to make the panoramas the focus of the exhibit.

Three-dimensional colour structure, Aegon, Aegonplein, The Hague, The Netherlands,1983-1986

Tiling for private swimming pool, Bentveld, The Netherlands,1999-2000

Computer-controlled light installation, Ossenmarkt parking garage, Groningen, The Netherlands, 2001-2005

Computer-controlled light installation, Ossenmarkt parking garage, Groningen, The Netherlands, 2001-2005

BLOCKS, Palkerplein (roundabout N326), Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 1976-1983

Skywalk Tilburg

Each panorama had its own room and was projected on a wall. Apparently vandalism is a big concern for museums (mainly because of school excursions), so they made a point of getting "vandal-proof" stainless steel trackballs.

At the start of the project I was warned that they had serious budget constraints, so I did not even know if they were going to have graphics cards in the PCs. Therefore I decided to go with DevalVR, because it will run nicely even without hardware acceleration. A few months before the opening a completely opposite problem surfaced: When they had done some tests and saw how smoothly the panoramas would turn with hardware acceleration, they decided to buy brand new PCs for all rooms. These had Vista installed, which hogs a lot more video ram for its own use. Being on the other side of the globe while they were experiencing all these strange problems did not help, but Fiero (of DevalVR) came through beautifully each time and provided a guiding hand with all aspects of the display, helping to solve both the hardware problems and my scripting problems.

In general, I think spherical panoramas are one of the core display technologies in the quest to "virtualize" the world. I am very ambivalent about this apparently unstoppable trend to move from the real world to a virtual one. On the one hand it is necessary because the "real" world is rapidly being trashed beyond recognition by us humans, on the other hand every attempt at virtualizing an environment is an extremely impoverished representation of the real thing. This is because we can only represent those things that we are aware of. We are aware of literally only one-millionth of the bit stream that enters our brain every second. The rest gets ignored at our peril. Maybe it is the reason why so many people are struggling with depression. The estuaries of the Mississippi delta and Puget sound are literally awash in anti-depressants. You can find traces of Prozac in the fish that swim there.

What Equipment do u use ?

I use a Canon 350D/8mmSigma and 5D/10.5mm Nikkor. Halfway through the work on the museum exhibit I bought the 5D because there were going to be many night shots and the 5D handles high ISO noise beautifully. I almost always use a Nodal Ninja as panorama head and now and then a BoPhoto lensring for pole-panos. All panos are shot with at least 3 bracketed exposures, although I dont always use all three. Most of the time I use FDRTools for HDR and tonemapping. The NextFest series was all done by hand with layers.

I like shooting group portraits and with those I usually crank up the contrast much higher for the faces and put them on a separate layer. Sometimes that becomes quite labor intensive, for instance the almost 500 people in the NextFest group pano and this one I made for a high school virtual tour.
I am not a very methodical worker and usually just keep trying things until it turns out the way I want it.

Which professional services do you offer ?

A few months ago I set up Picturebubbles.com for professional services with business partner and fellow panoramic photographer Josh Korwin. Businesses and institutions are often spending large sums of money on websites with very little functionality. It is our task (and a difficult one) to demonstrate the benefits of true interactivity versus pretty Flash content. Corporations are still stuck in the "commercials" paradigm: Show the people a snazzy commercial and they will go "wow!" and buy your product. That is not working any more. The world has changed and it is our job to show the benefits of these new interactive technologies.

Links:
Sphericalpanoramas.com
Carelstruycken.com
Picturebubbles.com
Peter Struycken "Digital Paradise", at Groninger Museum

Related articles in this issue:
WIRED NEXTFEST - A PANORAMA REPORTAGE BY CAREL STRUYCKEN