In February we reported on the Worldwide VR Panorama Web site, which lets you travel the world by VR panorama. Over the past several months, the site has seen several extensive changes in both design and content.
The site supports QuickTime VR and Java VR. QuickTime VR is Apple’s virtual reality technology. All major applications that play QuickTime movies can also play QuickTime VR movies.
Creator Hans Nyberg still maintains the directory of VR panoramas, but said his main interest right now is full screen QTVR. A week after MacCentral’s original article, he started a “Full Screen of the Week” feature showing QTVR filling most of the screen using the method he had used in his VR Aarhus and Virtual Denmark sites since 2001.
“I have presented 34 full screen QTVRs from 28 photographers, all of which can be seen from the archive,” Nyberg told MacCentral. “There are well known photographers like Don Bain from Virtual Guidebooks Jook Leung from New York-New Jersey with the ‘ Tribute in Light ‘ panorama that was also featured last week at the re-launch of VRMag.”
This week Nyberg is presenting what he claims is the world’s first Cubic QTVR Underwater panorama. The spherical panorama was made by Mal Yeo, an Australian underwater amateur photographer, and offers a view from the wreck of the Liberty, which sank off Tulamben Bali on January 11, 1942.
Yesterday, the Worldwide VR Panorama Web site unveiled a new full screen QTVR: the basilika, Santa Maria Maggiore, in Rome. The QTVR was made by Eric Poppleton of EPOP Inc. for VRWAY.