Last summer during a visit to one of my favorite living historical museums, Rock Ledge Ranch, I decided to make a QuickTime VR of the entrance.
This was done using all open-source tools that are far more advanced than the originating QTVR tools a decade ago. Back in 1995 when you wanted to try this you had to be very careful with the nodal point while panning the equipment. The QTVR software ran somewhere between $600 and $800. It was very technical and you had to tilt your head sideways to view the flow as it cut and restitched photos. I think you even had to do all this on a Macintosh, too – though shouldn’t everyone be using a Mac (grin)?
Since then, people have reverse engineered how QTVR works and have created some very slick open source tools that allow us to build these on a PC and at much less than the $600+ original software price. Even better, some of the software is extremely good at cleaning up our angular distortions from bad nodal points. That means even simple tripods (like the cheapo walmart brand used for this photo shoot) can be used without the expensive $100-$500 bracket solutions.
I meant to post this up ages ago. I also meant to post every weekday evening, feed the homeless and save the whales. While you’re waiting for that surge in whale population, enjoy the virtual panorama past the entrance across the bridge of Rock Ledge Ranch.
