Live Picture Inc, which merged with virtual reality software house RealSpace Inc at the beginning of the year, unveiled its first Real Space product at the Internet World event last week. The RealSpace Imaging Solution, aimed at web designers working with interactive 2D and 3D media-rich content, includes image viewers, client-server modules and authoring tools based on the FlashPix image file format and the associated Internet Imaging Protocol, co-authored by Hewlett-Packard Co, Eastman Kodak Co, Microsoft Corp, Netscape Communications Corp and Live Picture itself. The tool, suitable for the development of online shopping applications, enables photospacial effects to be built into online browsing, shopping applications and other electronic commerce applications. RealSpace-enabled sites can be made to zoom in on a product for examination in fine detail, without pixilation or high bandwidth consumption, said the company. The RealSpace Image Server is the first application to be based on Hewlett-Packard’s Imaging for Internet framework for distribution, sharing, viewing and printing high quality images over the Web. The application also supports real time VRML 3D to create photorealistic 3D environments. RealSpace Image Server supports Windows NT 4.0, HP-UX, Sun Solaris, Silicon Graphics Inc’s Irix and Apple Computer Corp and IBM Corp AIX systems.
