Now you can travel the world via QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR). Well, sort of.
QuickTime VR is Apple’s award-winning, photo-realistic, cross-platform virtual reality technology that makes it possible to explore places as if you were there. All major applications that play QuickTime movies can also play QuickTime VR movies.
The WorldWide VR Panorama Links lets you travel the world by VR panorama. Its creator, Hans Nyberg, mainly supports QTVR, but will also link to Java VR sites such as that of Andrew Nemeth, “if they are of good quality.” The WorldWide VR Panorama page now links to sites containing over 17,000 panoramas.
There’s also a feature page that’s updated each month with info on a VR photographer. February features the well-known Don Bain from Virtual Guidebooks. He just returned home from Maui with 93 more panoramas.
Running the WorldWide VR Panorama page with a QTVR focus isn’t easy, Nyberg told MacCentral.
“Apple does very little to support the QTVR producers,” he said. “For instance, there’s been no update of QTVR Authoring Studio to support Cubic panoramas. I hope Apple will find some time to do this while waiting for the MPEG-4 licensing to be improved.”
Modern computers and fast DSL connections make it possible to show QTVR in full screen over the Internet, Nyberg said. To view a panorama on a 21-inch screen “is a fantastic experience that I believe will soon be used by tourist pages.”
“For the moment my sites and Charles Evans’ site are the only sites with full screen panoramas, as far as I know.”