The panoramas on this page can be viewed with Quicktime,
available for both the Macintosh and the PC from
www.quicktime.com. All panoramas are "Cubic Quicktime
Virtual Reality" scenes--Cubic QTVR.
The process for making and displaying them includes:
(1) Taking five photographs with an 8mm
fisheye lens on a single lens reflex digital camera,
equally spaced around the horizon plus one photo taken
directly upward.
(2) Stitching and blending these 6 images
into a single rectangular image that is approximately 3700
x 7400 pixels using RealViz Stitcher 5.5U software.
(3) Converting the RealViz output to the
Quicktime (.mov) format using Cubic Convertor. The
dimensions and compression are adjusted so the image can be
transmitted electronically. Typically, one uses about 70%
compression, resulting in a file size that is about 2-3mb.
This would not be adequate for print, but is satisfactory
for full-screen viewing on the Internet.
(4) The code for displaying the .mov files
online, in a full-screen format, is generated with
Pleinpot.