3d gallery

Sounds cool, but it never loaded.  The Shockwave loading indicator slowly went from 0 to 100 and then back down to 0 and never moved again.  I gave up after about 5 minutes. 

The Flash work is very cool and unique. I like the concept.

BUT

A. I don't think most of the world will be able to view it due to lack of download speed and lack of new hardware that will run it. I have a killer connection speed and it took me awhile. Plus I had to download shockwave to begin with.

B. For a perfectionist photographer this is a strange choice for presentation. You're too busy "playing" in the gallery to look at the pictures. Having the image on all the sides of a cube make it busy and doesn't tell me what the photographer wants me to look at. The photographs aren't that strong to begin with from what I can tell, so this makes it seem like he's using a gimmicky webite to make up for a lack of good images.

C. Gallery progression. Or lack of it. Was there a theme to each floor or a progression of images that I was supposed see? If there was I missed it. It just seems like a random hodge podge of photos.

I guess even though it's a cool site, I just didn't "get" it.

thanks all for having a look at this. sorry it did not load for low internet conections,it takes a lot to get a 3d environment as a web page(html).I can make these galleries as stand alone projectors no shockwave involved. For the guy who did not get the concept, I am trying to develop 3d environments as galleries.It is not me trying to be flash It is me trying to develop new environments for galleries. Maybe I'll do a 3d Tate
next.Anyway I think the photos are fine.If anyone has any ideas for an environment and photos let me know.
all the best    james

I get the concept, and I like the idea of it. I just don't think it translates the photo's to the viewer as well as it could. I understand it's a work in progress and your trying to develop your idea.
You mentioned in your first post that this was kind of like navigating through a game environment. Most games have a beginning, and end, that things the designer wants you to see and do along the way. That's what I don't see here. And what I don't "get", for lack of a better term. A book or portfolio is layed out the same way. You take time to arrange the photo's so that the viewer can discover what your concept and reason behind them is. This can be simple or complex. Your doing this in a 3D world which could make this very complex.
As far as making an environment to view pictures, it works. But for displaying an artists body of work it needs some tweaking in my opinion to show the work in it's best form.

Maybe it's your code.

I'll be honest James.  I almost deleted your first post.  When a new user comes by and his first post is "hey, look at my what I've done for another photographer" it strikes me as spammy.  I gave it the benefit of the doubt because you asked for opinions and got a few.  But you don't sound like you're interested in anyone giving you an honest opinion.  You have attacked everyone that has commented blaming them not getting it, blaming their connection speed, blaming their graphic card.  We take pride here in giving honest critiques of posted images and that carried over to comments on your site. 

Several people have made valid comments on your program.  These are coming from photographers which I assume to be your target market.  No potential client is going to wait 5 minutes to see a photographer's work.  They're going to hit the back button and move on.  Most won't install Shockwave. 

Three of us have left comments.  One (me) never got it to load after 5 minutes.  Yesterday I tried again and left the browser window open while I did some work on another screen.  About 4 hours later and the Shockwave loading indicator was still stuck at zero.  One had to download Shockwave to view it.  And one didn't have Flash.  So out of the three of us that left comments, all three had issues loading the site.  Sure, it's a small sample.  But it is something you need to look at. 

The second link worked, relatively quickly actually.  I assume that the first link is similar.  If it is, it's not something I would use for my photography.  I think that something like that focuses too much on the technology and not enough on the photography.  You're going to have people moving around the world because it's game like and ignoring the photos up on the wall.  When I show photos I want as few distractions as possible and I think that, while the techie geek side of me thinks that moving around a virtual gallery is very cool, it is taking the focus away from where it should be.  It's technology for the sake of technology, not coming up with a solution.

I appreciate that you have spent a lot of time and effort on this.  But at the end of the day, the visitor really doesn't care what went into something like that.  They care how it works and how it looks.  They care about the presentation, not about what you had to do to get it there. 

Think about it this way.  Microsoft had hundreds of developers spending thousands of hours on Vista.  My first thought when I think of Vista is the Mac commercial with the secret service agent "Mac has issued a salutation, accept or deny."  I don't care how many hours were spent.  I don't care how cool the Aero effects are, I care that they slow down my machine.  They took a problem (switching between windows) and made a graphically cool solution, but one that loses functionality because it's so much slower than the old method. 

I guess my point is it seems like you're taking this all personally, when you really shouldn't be. 

If you want to discuss this further, rather than blaming the user, feel free.  Just know that I'm really close to pulling out my thread closing stick. 

I waited a long (for me) time and went somewhere else.

But I'm like that.