The whole picture: Steerable video is right around the corner

You enter an unfamiliar room. You glance up at the ceiling and see a crystal chandelier. You glance down at the floor and... where are your feet?

They're planted firmly under your PC workstation. You're in an Internet "immersive photograph" from Interactive Pictures, a graphic "bubble" that lets you navigate around a digitized 360 degrees photo using your mouse or keyboard.

Interactive grew out of a company that performed robotic photography for hazardous materials producers in the mid-1980s. It holds the patents on key technology that links two 185 degrees fisheye lenses, then combines the pictures while correcting for distortion. Web surfers download a plug-in and look around the photos, called IPIX, using a mouse or keyboard.

When Chairman and CEO James Phillips came to the company a year ago from Motorola-a 25% partner in Interactive since 1994-he aimed straight for the Internet. On the Web, Interactive targets advertisers that want to give potential customers a wraparound view of their wares: high-end real estate agents, travel agents, cruise lines and destination marketers. Customers include Coldwell Banker, ERA, Century 21, Hilton Hotels, Holland American Line and NASA. Interactive technology regularly is incorporated into the Internet offerings of some 30 news organizations, including the CNN Web site.

Toyota and Honda use the technology to instruct dealers about products. Sikorsky Aircraft incorporates IPIX into its flight simulators. Movie studios use IPIX to scout film locations. Computer game developers are basing their games on IPIX photos rather than graphic environments.

The commercial uses will accustom the public to immersive photography, but Interactive aims also at the consumer market. "People are using pretty much the same technology today as they did to photograph Abe Lincoln and Geronimo-only with color. We want to shift the paradigm for the 75 billion pictures taken annually in this country. We think we can get half of that market," Phillips said.

Eastman Kodak recently unveiled an immersive digital camera lens suite including the lens, software to combine the photos and 12 compression keys that post the IPIX to the Web or into e-mail. Priced at about $1000, the package targets photo professionals, but Phillips said the next version will cost less and appeal to high-end amateurs.

In July, as a sign of its determination to reach a broader market, the company named Jeff Peters, former vice president of digital applied imaging at Eastman Kodak, as president and CEO.

The next step is steerable digital video. The same technology that combines and stores two still photos can store live feed from a video camera. Because the picture is digitized, it does not require robotic tilt, pan or zoom, and an unlimited number of viewers can control what they see from their desktops

The obstacle is the bandwidth IPIX photos require. In June, Interactive demonstrated steerable video over a LAN at about 12.5 frames a second, the speed of a standard videoconference call. But Phillips predicted those speeds will rise within a year to 30 frames a second broadcast over a WAN. His company has entered into an equity partnership with The Discovery Channel and MediaOne. The group plans to test steerable video of Discovery Channel content in one of MediaOne's major metropolitan markets by the end of the year, said Natalie Egleston, director of business development for MediaOne Interactive.

"We have the killer app for the medium," said Phillips. He pointed to the disappointing response to digital TV in Japan. "It isn't interactive. The picture is high-resolution, but that alone doesn't justify the price. Interactivity and the right camera will drive it more than anything, and we've got the camera."

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