Aspen Portrait :: Guide to interactive panoramas

Guide to Interactive Panoramas

What is it? | How are Panoramas Made? | How to navigate Flash and QuickTime | QuickTime vs Java

What is it?

VR (virtual reality) Photography
Interactive photography
Immersive imaging
360 panoramas
Visual / virtual tours

These are all terms that are often interchangeable. VR photography gives you the opportunity to look around inside an image and explore different points of view.

Cylindrical and Cubic Panoramas


How are they made? The panoramas on this site are constructed from multiple images which are "stitched" together. They are then shown as either cylindrical or cubic. Both have 360 degrees of view, however the cubics offer the advantage of being able to look all the way up and down.


Flash Navigation Tips Flash™ is fast becomming the virtual tour platform of choice with 98% of worldwide computers installed with the Flash viewer. Flash allows you to zoom in for a closer look through the use of the shift and command keys. You can also use the control bar for navigation. To view the panorama in Full-Screen click the button to the far right of the tool bar QuickTime Navigation Tips Quicktime allows you to zoom in for a closer look through the use of the shift and control keys:
			Hold down the shift key to zoom in.
			Hold down the control key to zoom out.
			The QuickTime movie screen also contains a – and + tool feature to zoom in and out.

QuickTime vs Java

Currently, most of the panoramas on this site are presented in QuickTime, a free application from Apple. QuickTime is renowned for it's ability to display high quality full screen VR panoramas. Some are also presented with a Java viewer. This is for the benefit of those people with slow computers or connections. Java doesn't work well with large files so those panoramas are much smaller.

This QuickTime standalone installer does not require an Internet connection during initial installation. To update QuickTime to a future version, you can run the QuickTime Updater on the Internet or download a future version of the stand alone installer.