When we show our panoramas to people for the first time, their comment is usually something like "Wow, incredible, awesome!"— followed immediately by "How do you make them?".

The panoramas are made by piecing together a dozen photographs, taken rotating around in a circle. The resulting image is a cylinder (its left and right edges match up). QuickTime software from Apple allows you to view the image from "inside", making it seem as if you were there. That's why we call it virtual reality (VR).

Many people assume the panoramas are some sort of video, made by spinning a video camera around in a circle. Actually it is much more sophisticated than that. What you are seeing is a single image, a cylinder, viewed from the inside and geometrically corrected in real time.

Five Steps to Create a VR Panorama

Step One: Take the Pictures

A series of pictures, usually from 12 to 16, is taken from a single point, rotating around in a circle. There must be 1/3 to 1/2 overlap between the pictures. For best results the pictures must be taken very precisely, so a tripod and special camera mount are usually used.

Step Two: Get Them Onto the Computer

If a digital camera was used, the images are merely downloaded to the computer. If negative film was used it must be scanned.

Step Three: Make a Panoramic Image

The QuickTime VR Authoring Studio (QTVRAS) from Apple is used to warp each image (to allow the geometry of overlapping images to match), and stitch it to adjacent images, blending the overlap areas. The result is a seamless panoramic image, where the left and right ends match up — essentially a cylinder. Perspective in the panorama is somehwhat distorted, similar to the effect of a fisheye camera lens.

Step Four: Create the QuickTime Movie

The panoramic image is typically very large, so it is reduced in size. Retouching and resizing are done in Adobe PhotoShop. Then QTVRAS is used again to compress the image and package it up as a movie.

Two sizes are routinely made: standard and fullscreen.

Step Five: View the Image

For the movie to play as a VR panorama it is necessary to use QuickTime software from Apple, either QuickTime Player or a web browser plug-in. This corrects to a more natural looking perspective, and allows panning up, down, and all the way around, as well as zooming in and out.