How it works
“VR photography, or virtual reality photography, is the art of capturing a complete scene as a single image, as viewed when rotating about a single central position.
A VR Photograph (panorama) encompasses an entire spherical view, the viewer can rotate horizontally and vertically,as if he was immersed within the real world scene.”
If you search on the web you will find tons of tutorials on how to take a VR Panorama. Hereby I will just give you a quick overview. The process of creating a panos consists in 3 main stages:
- take the pictures
- stitch the pictures
- show off your pano with a viewer
1. There are different techniques for taking the pics, and they mainly depend on your equipment. With a normal camera it will take at least 60 shots, with a fish-eye lens and a full-frame camera you can reach a minimum of 3. Another important detail: ALWAYS rotate your camera around its nodal point (also called pivot, rotation point). Thus can be achieved with an expensive pano-head or hand-holding your camera (see below for useful links).
2. Also concerning photo stitching softwares you will find a lot of talk on the web, to me the best ones are: Hugin (free), Autopano and PTGui. After stitching the shots it’s a good practice to ultimate it with the good old fella Photoshop.
3. The output of the step before will just be a flat 1:2 image; also called Equirectangular Panorama, since it is the projection of a sphere. Here it comes another software, more like a player to create the “interactive” part. The best solution ever is krpano, but also the open panosalado works.
See also:
Good luck!