v146 - Panorama is faster (not more accurate)

[nwhit]

Loaded the new beta yesterday and read something about improvements to the pano. So I loaded a project I'm working on, 302 - 6 MB pics of a drone mapping. I have to say that it executed much faster than 1.6.7 or 1.7.1, plus it was more accurate in the stitching. 

Open GL and Metal Compute off. I think I'll give it a try to see if Metal is working better in this beta.

 

[nwhit]

Tried with Metal Compute on and it wasn't any faster as far as I could tell (long enough that I need to leave it alone for quite some time, so don't know exactly when it ends processing at each stage, and that's true for both Metal on and off). 

I have to say that the second stitch using the same pics was not as good as the first one with a good amount of misalignments, similar to what I was getting with 1.6.7 and 1.7.1, so perhaps the accuracy part on the first one with the new beta was just a random chance thing. I am not aware that Metal would affect the accuracy of the stitching but don't know that.