Ever seen one of these photos where you can interactively zoom and pan around? They’re known as 360° or VR photos.
More formally, VR photography (Virtual Reality photography) is the art of capturing or creating a complete scene as a single image, as viewed when rotating about a single central position.
I want to learn how to shoot, interactively view and share my own VR photos.
Project Notes
| Status | Completed |
| Goal | Learn how to shoot, interactively view and share VR photos |
After a deep dive over several weekends, here’s what I learned:
- Equirectangular Projection is the most common VR image format. Another popular option is Cubic Projection and you can easily convert between the two.
- The Google Street View mobile app (iOS, Android) is a cheap and easy way to shoot Equirectangular projections.
- Since Equirectangular images are heavily distorted, you need a “viewer” program to interact with them.
- Windows has built-in support via the .pano file extension. It’s relatively easy to create your own.
- Web viewers are also popular. Here’s how to publish VR photos to Photosyth, Facebook and YouTube.
Project Updates
- Publishing VR Panoramas to Facebook - 12 Oct 2016
- Installing Hugin and Panotools on Windows - 17 Oct 2016
- Convert Equirectangular Projection to Cube Faces - 18 Oct 2016
- Publishing VR Panoramas to Photosynth - 28 Oct 2016
- What are .pano files? - 29 Oct 2016
- Convert Equirectangular Projection to .Pano File - 30 Oct 2016
- All You Need to Know about 360 VR Photos - 02 Nov 2016
- Publishing VR Panoramas to YouTube - 08 Sep 2019
