[WEB LINKS] 360 panoramas

I have always been a fan of the 360 panoramas right from the outset. See the BBC's range of 360 shots of the United Kingdom for examples.

If you have never heard of these, they are produced using one of two systems...

The simple system uses a set of photos taken from a camera on a tripod which swivels round 360 degrees, software then stitches the images back together. You can then use a little Javascript on your website to allows you to play it back from your point of view rotating the camera all around and zooming in and out (obviously better with high resolution pics).

The professional option is a mirror dome system, the camera lies on its back on a tripod and the mirrored dome is suspended above it. One photo gets you the full image (with you hiding under the tripod). Software is used to turn the image into a 360 degree shot and again a little javascript on your website gets you a cool rotating 360 degree image. 360 one vr is one professional system on the market, 0-360 is another

Here is a pretty cool site called Arounder that followed through with one of my ideas of shooting the whole of europe with one of these cameras. Try Barcelona for a really excellent tour. They are all nice high resolution shots.

Take system this one step further and put a video camera where the camera is and you get 360 degree shots of a movie, in this case various tours on an open top London bus (BBC) - needs RealPlayer.

If you really want to see how cleverly you can use this, get hold of Britneys dance beat on the PS2 (yes Britney's dance beat!) and go to the video vault and select immersive to see the 360 concert warm up movies (you have to unlock most of them). They are the future of TV once we get stereoscopic headsets that don't give you a headache.