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Full-screen QTVR can take its place as a serious graphics format.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T e c h n o f i l e
Virtual reality grows up in stunningly realistic photo panoramas


July 11, 2004


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, The Post-Standard

   Are you tired of reality TV? Maybe it's time for another kind of reality -- the virtual kind. You can immerse yourself in virtual reality videos and come as close to getting away from it all as the laws of physics allow.
   Virtual reality, or VR, puts the viewer into the middle of a 3D scene. By moving your mouse or pressing certain keys, your vantage point changes, as if you were looking up or down or to the side, or as if you were walking forward or backward.
   To view a VR video (or "movie," as it's usually called), you need Apple's QuickTime software. It's free. Don't fret if you're not an Apple computer user; QuickTime is available for all versions of Windows as well as Apple's own Macintosh computers. The QuickTime software automatically shows QuickTime VR movies. You don't have to do anything special.
   VR seems to have grown up since the last time I spent any time enjoying it. The VR movies I remember from the past often were fuzzy or just plain silly. But the ones I've collected off the Web in the last few weeks are spectacular. I'm especially impressed by the variety of full-screen QuickTime VR (QTVR) movies. With a large monitor and the increased image resolution of Apple's current QuickTime VR software, full-screen QTVR can take its place as a serious graphics format.
   To see for yourself, start with the amazing Hans Nyberg, inventor of the modern full-screen virtual reality Web site. He has two QTVR-related sites -- www.qtvr.dk (chose the English version if you don't know Danish) and http://panoramas.dk/.
   Make sure you have the latest QuickTime software, then go to the first site and look for a link to the QTVR of the recent Danish royal wedding. You should see a wide fisheye photo on the main royal wedding page. Click that photo to open a large view of Nyberg's main QTVR movie, with thumbnail views of all five royal wedding QTVR movies at the right.
   To look in any direction in the main QVTR movie, click your left (or primary) mouse button and slowly drag it while holding the button down. Drag in the direction you want to turn your gaze. You can pan up and down, too. (Be sure to take a long look at the gold-leaf designs and paintings on the ceiling.) Pressing the Shift key (Windows or Mac) zooms you closer, and pressing the Ctrl key on either computer zooms you out.
   Fast pans work well only if you have a very fast computer. The entire QuickTime movie is fetched from the remote site in Denmark before you're able to pan in all directions, so your Internet connection speed is not a factor in how the QTVR is shown.
   Clicking on any of the thumbnails on the right opens that QTVR on the main screen. I was fascinated to note that one of the royal QTVR movies, the Wedding March, had a virtual reality 3D sound track. When I panned across the balcony, the sound shifted just as it would in the "real" kind of reality, so that when I changed my gaze to the back -- when I turned my virtual head around, in other words -- the sound of the royal orchestra came from behind me. It even shifted properly and came from below me when I looked up. I found that incredible.
   After you've called the neighbors in to see this marvel, visit a few more QTVR sites. There's www.panoguide.net, for QTVR enthusiasts, and www.fullscreenqtvr.com, which has links to many of the best full-screen QTVR movies on the Web. My favorite QTVR movie (apart from the ones taken at the Danish royal wedding) probably is the Yulong River scene from China. View it at www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen3/f14.html.
   These panoramic scenes are so good you'll want to view them again and again. And you can, without needing to go to the Web site. Simply download the QuickTime movies to a folder on your computer, then double click them to have QuickTime show them without the browser.
   The easiest way to do this is to right click (or Ctrl-click) on the link for the QTVR movie you want to download. In other words, instead of opening the link, right click or Ctrl-click and choose "Download" from the options.