Rules and regulations

By submitting an entry, you agree that you are the sole creator of the entered work, and/or that you have permission to use and enter said work into the Contest.

The organizers retain the rights to disallow or refuse entries for any reason which they deem necessary.

These guidelines may be subject to change by the organizers.

General rules & regulations

Eligibility

• Current members of the IVRPA or the IAPP can submit up to two (2) entries in each of the 'print' and 'interactive' contest categories as well one (1) in the 'gigapixel' category.
• The total number of selected entries from IAPP members will be limited to maximum of 25% of selected entries.
  See the instructions for IAPP members.
• Non-IVRPA members may join the IVRPA for as little as $25 and gain the benefits of membership as well as have the opportunity to enter the contest.

Rights & permissions

Contest finalists grant the IVRPA the right to print images for display, to be used solely in promoting the association, the contest, and the VR industry.

The photographer also grants the IVRPA right to use the still or interactive images on the IVRPA web site(s). Copyright and all other rights will be retained by the photographer. When used for purposes other than judging for the contest, the creator’s name will always be associated with the image.

Entries will be uploaded to the IVRPA server: Entries will not be made public until after the submission deadline. After the submission deadline, entries will be shown without credits, in order not to influence judging. Full credits will be added after the Contest completes.

Meta data

Entries should have a clearly specified title, place and date of photography. No logos, copyrights, names, dates, text or borders on the image or on a "tripod cap", and when possible no metadata in the file. (There may be exceptions to this for commercial work -- please inquire).

Categories

There are three main categories: Still/print, Gigapixel and Interactive.

Judging/selection

Entries will be made anonymous, and will be judged by IVRPA and IAPP member peers. Entries will be judged on both their technical and creative merits, as well as their suitability to represent the IVRPA in public exhibitions.

A selection of all entries in each category will be become part of the IVRPA presence at Photokina 2008 with full photo credits, the largest European fair in the photography industry. This contest gives you a unique opportunity to showcase your work to huge number of photography professionals, and a very large audience of interested people.

'Print' category

The panoramic print exhibition is showcases the work of our members. Up to 40 entries will be selected to be part of this exhibition. High quality prints will be mounted on the walls of our booth.

The images entered must be panoramic in nature, taken with either a traditional panoramic camera, a scanning camera, or stitched from multiple exposures (either digital or film). A minimum horizontal field of view of 180° is required.

The images must be submitted as high quality (low compression) JPEG files. The images must be submitted 200 DPI files at a borderless size of up to 35" x 17.5" (7000 x 3500 pixels) for equirectangular or cylindrical images. Vertical entries must be rotated 90 degrees to match these dimensions. Square entries must have a borderless print size of 23.5" x 23.5" (4700 x 4700 pixels). Entries must meet one of the dimensions (width or height) and not exceed the other, or meet both dimensions. The filesize may not exceed 10000kb (~9.5 Mb).

Other panoramic projections may be entered, as long as they fulfill all photographic, field of view, and print requirements. Entries not able to fulfill these print requirements will be disqualified.

Submission deadline

The last day for submission to the 'Print' category is Sunday July 6, 2008 . Entries are closed July 7, 2008. All dates and times are in Central European Time (CET).

'Gigapixel' category

A limited number of high quality, very large prints will be produced, and these will be at our booth one after the other. Unfortunately we have not been able to source a printing lab that would let us print images at actual gigapixel resolution, so we have decided on the following:

Gigapixel images will be displayed as a large print (400 x 76 cm @ 200DPI, or about 190 megapixel), in combination with two prints of cropped details at the original resolution. The gigapixel image display will be completed with large screen showing an interactively zoomable version of the image.

The images entered must be panoramic in nature, and their original full resolution must be at least 1 gigapixel (1.000.000.000 pixels). The aspect ratio of the gigapixel image must be between 2:1 and 8:1; the optimum aspect ratio, resulting in the largest print, is 5.26:1.

The gigapixel image must be submitted as a downsized preview and two square image crops from at the native resolution. The downsized preview must be a high quality JPEG with a borderless pixel size not exceeding 5500 x 1045 pixels. The JPEG file may not exceed 5000kb (~5 Mb).

The two additional cropped images should represent two interesting areas in the full image. These images should be submitted as high quality JPEG images at 5000 x 5000 pixels, and should not exceed 10000kb (~9.5 Mb).

If your entry is selected for display on the Photokina booth, you will be asked at a later time to supply a high quality overview image, as well as an interactively viewable version. Please be prepared to supply a version of the image not exceeding the maximum print size of 400 x 76 cm @ 200DPI for printing upon request.

Submission deadline

The last day for submission to the 'Gigapixel' category is Monday July 28, 2008. Entries are closed July 29, 2008. All dates and times are in Central European Time (CET).

'Interactive' category

We hope to show the best, most exciting entries in the 'Interactive' category will be shown on a number different types of interactive displays on the IVRPA booth, showcasing both the photography and display technologies. Display types will include both normal fullscreen 'click and drag' on a computer screen, as well as VR goggles and other immersive display types.

Entries in the interactive category must be submitted as Quicktime VR .mov files. This does not reflect the technology that will be used to display the panoramas to the public; the .mov file format is used merely as a container for the panoramic scene and its viewing parameters, purely for convenience. For display of the scene, we will be using other technologies than Quicktime as well, including Flash players and custom software/hardware combinations. The panoramic image and its view parameters may be extracted from the Quicktime .mov container for display.

The interactive entry must be 360 degrees horizontally, and only single nodes are allowed. Wired sprites added to the Quicktime VR file may not be shown on all display types. Entries must be submitted as JPEG encoded .mov files. The filesize may not exceed 3 Mb.

Submission deadline

The last day for submission to the 'Interactive' category is Sunday September 14, 2008. Entries are closed September 15, 2008. All dates and times are in Central European Time (CET).