“Cubic” QuickTime VR movies have gained a foothold in the real estate market as Pangea Software Inc. on Friday announced the release of PangeaVR, a Web browser plug-in designed to speed up the display of QuickTime VR (QTVR) movies using OpenGL-based hardware graphics acceleration.
“Cubic” QuickTime VR movies have gained a foothold in the real estate market as a way to provide online home tours, according to Pangea. Cubic VR is also used on other commercial Web sites and by artists. Up until now, however, QuickTime VR images have depended on software in order to render, making them slow to display and animate, particularly for high-resolution VR images. Pangea Software claims PangeaVR — available only for Mac OS X — is the first Web browser plug-in to use hardware acceleration in this way.
PangeaVR has been released for free and the developer will soon release the source code to the public; Pangea is encouraging developers to port it to other platforms. The software does require Web page creators to use a special tag to activate the PangeaVR plug-in. If that plug-in isn’t present, the Web browser will default to software-based QuickTime VR rendering. A list of Web sites that have been updated to be PangeaVR-compatible is available from the Web site.
In related news, Pangea Software noted that it’s now offering panoramic photography services. Anyone interested in having VR content created for them can contact Pangea for more information.