Well, in a way, I am happy (!) that they did go bancrupt since they in my (and others) opinion served their clients in a very shrewd and hostile way with their low imagequality, their pricing and their plug-in-policy, that as above mentioned, forced a download from their website in order to show the tours.
Most the entire world community at one time had "no IPIX"-banners on their homepages, and if you want some deep and vwery interesting reading please google "ipix fight" and you will be sitting for days in amazement over this company and its behaviour.
I reapeat, I and many many VR-producers are VERY HAPPY that they are gone.
Lets hope its forever and that they do not come back.
Here is some of their TRUE history, well concealed
behind their sales-attitudes:
Their technology leaned on a patent they had stolen from its inventor, which by chance and hard struggle finally could reclaim his property after years of legal struggle.
And, IPIX, when they were called OMNIVIEW, in 1996, harassed other vendors of Panoramic Stitching software by claiming the above mentioned software-patent, which as said, also was stolen.
They were also "kidnapping" the panoramic motifs from the photographers just by forcing them to pay for "keys" to the images, and having a very unsound business-model, making it very expensive to show the panoramic tours since they demanded money for each webpage they should appear on.
They also tried to gain "world domination" by undermining all other technologies by having their own photographic crew, make tours so cheap that hardly any VR-photographer could survive on creating their tours.
Other - and mostly all of the time, very superior - technologies they shunned and backtalked.
IPIX changed their name from Omniview after they had succesfully but wrongly won a legal battle, leaning on the Stolen Patent, against Interactive Pictures of Portland Oregon, who was producing a similar and superior software for stitching Panoramic images - Interactive PI(ctures-replaced by "ix" - in order to avoid eventual and truthful disclosure of their shady reasoning.
IPIX history is filled with investors money, that they spent gladly, their income did not through their lifetime cover much more than half of the money invested.
Ivested money reahced more than 300 million USD - their income was just slightly above 200.
Great - somebody didnt hurt loosing a 100 mill. ?
Now, whith this very unsound company gone, the rest of the VR-producing world can finally rest - assured that we now have a fair opportunity to be able to show off our quality and dedication.
You, who have IPIX-panoramas that no longer function because of their bancruptcy and closing of the website, should however try to find another VR-producer who might help you with conversion of the material that you already have or have them come do a new tour, this time hopefully with some image-quality attached.
I am situated in Sweden, and we work all over Europe, if you need to contact me for any VR-question or production, we have been in businees for 10 years - and we survived IPIX and have always created better panoramic images and tours.
We can help you fair and square.
http://www.panograf.com
Received on Wed Aug 23 16:53:04 2006
