QuickTime VR allows you to tape (stitch) up a group of related photographs together into one long circular picture. Once done, you can now walk-through (with the zoom in and zoom-out function) and interact with these pictures.

Three different types of media are supported in QuickTime VR: panoramas, objects, and scenes.

Panoramas
A QuickTime VR panorama let your view a scene, like an outdoor view, or a room from one central pivotal point (called a node). The full panorama can be panned horizontally 360 degrees to provide the illusion that you are standing in the center of the panorama and looking out all around you. Users can zoom in or out of each view. It is a perfect tool for walk-through of campus and showcasing classroom designs.

Objects
A QuickTime VR object allows a user to view a three-dimensional object like a bone, leaf, computer chip from a variety of angles. Many manufactures are now using QuickTime VR images to showcase the interior and exterior of their products.

Scenes
Panoramas and objects can be combined together to form a scene which is a collection of several panoramas all linked together by interactive hot spots. For example a hot-spot on a museum scene might take you to another room in the museum by clicking on the hot-spot.

Method
Panoramic Scene
For a panoramic scene, set up a digital camera and tripod at the desired location with precise levelling. Plan and photograph the panorama, taking a series of individual pictures from one spot by sequentially rotating the camera and taking about 12 - 20 overlapping pictures. The more pictures you take up to a maximum of about 24, the better will be the granularity

Once the images are captured, you can import them into Adobe Photoshop for editing. Backgrounds can be removed and both brightness and contrast can be corrected. Following that you can export the images into Apple's QuickTime VR Authoring Studio software package for taping (stitching) the images together. The finished panorama media can then be uploaded to your website ready for viewing.

Equipment
You will need a Power Macintosh with Apple's QuickTime VR software. For Windows users, you can take a look at VR Worx. VR Work would need a Pentium III processor with ample hard-disk, good graphics card and about 128MB of memory. Once the image is on the web, a standard web browser with the free QuickTime viewer plug-in is all you will need to view and interact with the scenes or objects.

QuickTime VR Resources

Educational QuickTime VR Sites

• University of North Carolina

Other Related QTVR Site