I've upgraded to IM4 already, but unfortunately it's not very usefult yet.  
It does have a few nice new features, but nothing that justifies the upgrade price IMO.  
But what is really frustrating when buying such an expensive upgrade is that is full of bugs. I really wish Realviz would start beta testing their programs before releasing them. One thing is that it crashes a lot, but another thing is that there are apparently many bugs that prevents it from working as expected.
I spent many hours yesterday trying to calibrate a couple of photos sets. Usually in IM3.5 it's enough with less than 10 markers, but for these projects I'm already past 60 markers, and still no calibration :-(
It does sometimes tell me that "Creation of coordinate system from survey Data succeeded. Warning: existing objects may have moved". If this wasn't so frustrating it would have been funny... Just for the record - I have not entered any survey data whatsoever. I have started from scratch several times, but not yet succeeded calibrating those shots.
I just tried IM3.5 on them, and it calibrated very good after around 10 markers, using exactly the same settings for good/bad residual.
There are also a lot of other annoying small bugs, but right now I'm so frustrated after losing so many working hours on this alpha state software that I don't feel like spending more time as a "paying beta tester" on this.
It's about time you start controlling the quality of your software before releasing it, or if you deliberately want us paying customers to be beta testers, tell us so in advance. It could save a lot of frustrations...

Bjornkn,
 
I am sorry to hear this because I have been considering the v4 upgrade in spite of the steep price. I guess now I'll just wait until a patch comes out. I certainly don't agree with having paying customers to beta test software, but I do think Realviz is not as severe an offender as some others, as they usually have a patch out within a few months. For example, one CAD program I use has bugs that go back at least two major revisions.
 
Hopefully Realviz will have a patch out soon.
 
Chris

Hello Bjornkn,  
 
  Please send your project (images + rzi file that calibrates in IM3.5) to support@realviz.com (giving build number, System).
 
We are actually working on a 4.02 version (4.01 is the Mac release), that will be available during January.
 
Best,
 
Stef

 
It's good to hear that you're working on a bug fix. It's funny, but today I received email from Realviz announcing that IM4 was just released.. Mine was installed 10 days ago, and I had to wait about a week for getting the download link to it after ordering.
I'm running version 4.0.1 build 15112 on XP Pro (Norwegian)
 
I'm afraid I didn't keep that project file. Maybe the 3.5version?
It would be a 15MB++ mail though, with all the images.
 
Right now I'm (beta) testing IM4 again, and it is really so frustrating. This time I started out by loading only 2 images, and they calibrated quite well. Then I wanted to load more images taken with the same camera, but that wasn't possible because that option was greyed out. If I tried to Import a camera from a previous project with the same camera/zoom it loaded, but with a picture res of -1,-1!  
Then I loaded the new photos letting IM4 create a new default Camera device, and then after loading them I switched to C50, which those photos were taken with.  
Now I have added 30 new markers and also cross referenced with some of the calibrated ones. Absolutely nothing happens - it's impossible to get it to calibrate the "new" camers, which now actually should be using the old C50 device (the focal length is still shown as 7.778 mm in the Photo properties, which is what it read from the EXIF, which don't contain any CCD size info on any my 4 Olympus digicams), while the calibrated cameras shows 32.237mm and 0.073 distortion.
I also changed all photos to use the new Camera device, but IM didn't seem to care at all about what device was used for each photo - it just kept the old calibration and didn't make any attempts at recalibrating, wihich IMO it definitely should have done..
 
Should I send you this project? It's only 3 photos (so far), at a total of around 3MB?
In that other project I loaded a lot of photos at the same time, but didn't put markers on more than a few in the first place.
 
A few things that are sorely missed in IM:
IM needs to be able to load more images using the same camera device.
 
It needs to be able to remove all calibration and start over again.
 
It also needs to be able to remove referencing/calibration on single markers/locators.
 
It needs to be able to force a recalibraition.
 
It needs to stop telling us that it has successfully created a coordinate system from survey data when it simply isn't true!
 
And it needs to stop telling us that the cameras may not be optimally calibrated and ask us if they should be installed anyway, just before it deforms each photo into to a ball with a handkerchief tied around it.  
Surely IM must know that there are no lenses that needs that kind of distortion correction? At least now it can be undone in IM4...
 
We really need shortcut keys for Move etc, preferably fully configurable shortcuts like in most other modern programs. The first thing I would do was to change select object/face/edge/point shortcuts to F3, F4, F5,F6...
 
I want to use Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab to scroll through my photos instead of Ctrl+arrows. That's what other programs use, and its on the left side of the keyboard.
 
Alt+Shift zoomWindow should work consistently in all modes IMO.
 
IM needs drag-drop of images. When I try to drop images onto IM it thinks it's a rzi file and asks me if I want to save the project before I load it!
Using that tiny file dialog preview simply doesn't cut it. I need to run AcDSee where I can see what photos I want and then find  
 
You should be able to flip the normal of a single face on an object. Now it flips everything, sometimes apparently randomly.
 
It's nice to have more constraints, but it would really be useful if you could tell it that 4 or more locators are on the same plane, and not only that they are on the same xy, xz or yz plane..

Hello,
 
  Yes, please send your images to support@realviz.com, so we can have a look at them. Your 2-images-calibrated project also.
 
We found the following bug in IM4.01:
Deletion of locators, does not work properly. Saving and reloading the project will show them again in the Scenebrowser. That means that they are still used by the engine, even if not seen.
 
Until the patch is available, I propose to do the following:
- do not delete, but use move marker to change its position
- do not delete, but uncheck "Used for calibration" (see mail below)
- delete directly in the .rzi file wich is a ascci file (Locators are surrounded by <L> and <\L> tags.
 
Some answer to your requests:
 

Actually you can, by selecting a locator in the scenebrowser and call the contextual menu ("used for calibration" ).
 

While creating markers IM (if "progressive calib" is checked in the prefs) will try to calibrate, and installs it only if residuals are good.
Actually pressing the calibrate button "forces" the calibration in all the modes, even with bad residuals.
But, forcing is possible only if a solution was found by the engine (solution found = camera + points reconstructed) and it happens that IM does not find any solution...
 
Thanks,
 
Stef

I sent the 2+1 project, with Att:Stef as Subject
That other project is actually more than 50MB with all the photos. Not suitable for email I guess...
 

 
Maybe that's what causes it then? I typically do delete some points now and then..
 

Actually you can, by selecting a locator in the scenebrowser and call the contextual menu ("used for calibration" ).
 OK, but I was thinking more like resetting it, and tell IM to start over again. Maybe it works to "disable" it and then "re-enable" it again?
 

While creating markers IM (if "progressive calib" is checked in the prefs) will try to calibrate, and installs it only if residuals are good.
Actually pressing the calibrate button "forces" the calibration in all the modes, even with bad residuals.
But, forcing is possible only if a solution was found by the engine (solution found = camera + points reconstructed) and it happens that IM does not find any solution...
 
Fair enough, but sometimes IM comes up with a totally messed up solution that is clearly wrong. Then it would be nice to be able to tell it to reset everything and start again. It should also be able to point at the problem Locators, and eventually disable them automatically when it finds that they are way out of line with the rest of the locators. When a locator has 20 as residual while the rest is below 0 it should be able to tell us which ones we should take a closer look at. Most likely it has been marked wrong? I know that we sometimes can get blue or red circles around them, but that is when it's only small problems. When the photos wraps up in napkins it's not just a small error, and those blue/red circles doesn't really help much then..
Also, IM4 has this bad habit that it tells us that it has established a coordinate system from our (non-exisiting) survey data...
 
 
Then just a couple of new bugs I found:
 
Quick zoom does not work as it should.
On a oriented photo it always zooms in at point 0,0,0 (origin), and on unoriented shots it just zooms in at the upper right corner or something.
Sometimes it also makes the entire shot disappear.
Also. it works on the "active" window even when the mouse is over another view (4-view mode). IMO it should really zoom in on the view where the mouse is located.
It would also be nice if the Quick Zoom could use the real photo pixels instead of the pixellated proxy. Setting it to more than 1024 makes my Radeon 9800Pro gets quite sluggish switching between shots, although the quality is much higher at 2048.
 
When selecting a marker in a shot it only shows the properties the first time, ie the first time you click a marker after doing something else.
If you click another marker the properties will not update/refresh.