About 360° Pano's
360° Panoramic images are made by taking multiple images of a scene and digitally stitching these images together to create an immersive and interactive view of a given location.
When viewed on a web site, these images allow the viewer to look all around the scene, look up or down, or to zoom in or out, simply by dragging their mouse or by using their keyboard
The scenes can also be linked to other related scenes to create a virtual tour, with each scene being linked by a series of "hotspots" or by image links contained within the scene, allowing the viewer to move from room to room.
The 360° Panorama's on this site are produced by "me" as an amateur with a mundane day job. I do what I do here because, I enjoy it!
Amateur versus Professional
I am an amateur & proud of it, making 360° panoramic views is a hobby for me. There are a lot of very good professionals around who produce excellent work & they are the ones I would want to emulate. However, there seems to be a never ending supply of self proclaimed "Professional VR Photographers" going around who seem to rejoice in turning out very poorly made panorama views. I am constantly surprised at just how many companies are actually paying money for badly exposed and poorly stitched panoramas and virtual tours.
The sad part is, it is so easy to spot poorly made 360° panoramic views. First thing I look for is "does the view cover the whole scene"? Full 360° panorama's should allow the viewer to look up and down, as well as all around. Next I would look at the exposure, just like with ordinary photographs, a well exposed image shows more detail than a poorly exposed image. If the pano is of an internal room with windows "are any exterior details viable" i.e. can I see what's outside the window? Lastly, I would look at the stitching, this is the joins between the images used to make the view, the joins should be seamless & totally invisible. If there is an obvious join or overlap, it is sloppy work!
Lastly, and the one I find quite amusing, is "the huge nadir patch or company logo" (usually found by dragging the view to straight down). This is put there to cover up the location of the tripod, however covering the area of the tripod is quite a simple process of taking an extra shot of the nadir. With a well made professionally produced panorama view, I would expect to see a company logo, the guys have a right to promote and advertise their own work. However, with well made panoramic views, this logo would be quite unobtrusive and would not detract from the scene. Whilst the poorly made panoramic view would have this enormous circular patch covering most of the entire area of the nadir viewpoint.
I find it is quite saddening to view poorly made panorama's of (sometimes quite well known and large comanies) web sites. i.e. if you were to run a hotel buisness, wouldnt you want to show your hotel in the best light possible? or dont you mind small details like broken walls and missaligned window frames being shown to your potential visitors?
My 360° Panorama views are amateur produced and compared with the true professonaly produced views, it is quite obvious that I am indeed an amateur. However, I would pitch my 360° views favourably against those "professional clowns" of the web any day of the week, and twice on sundays!
