360 Rage Panoramas News Item

Flash Panorama software is growing mature

One of the problems for makers of multi media for the web is that standard web browsers dont support these media without downloading a plug-in. In many cases users are forced to do all kinds of actions and go through security or anti-virus warnings before they can see what the maker wanted them to see. These installation problems may cause that the user gives up, and leaves the web page.

For Panorama Photographers Quicktime allways has been a popular choice. The quality of Quicktime Panoramas is good and there are plenty of possibilities built in Quicktime to create virtual tours etc. Disadvantage of Quicktime is that only 59.7 percent of the web users have it installed. (source: Adobe dec 2006) Another disadvantage is that downloading Quicktime takes a long time, its quite large.

Java viewers also are popular, but as it seems, not so popular as Quicktime. Advantage of Java applets for showing panoramas is that 87.3 procent of the users have a Java virtual machine installed.

The Adobe Shockwave player for Panoramas, by Field of View, is an excellent player, with extensive (but not to easy) scripting possiblities, and has hardware display acceleration. According to Adobe 49.8 procent of the users has the Shockwave player installed, which is an obvious disadvantage. Of these users, some may have to install additional components to use the Field of View Panorama player.

DevalVR is gaining ground as a Panorama player, but unfortunately only available for Windows. Since a short while the player also is able to use hardware accelaration. Also this player has nice scripting possibilties. Advantage is that it is just a small download. Disadvantage is the small installed base, and DevalVR only works on Windows machines.

You can find samples in the Panorama Gallery of this site.

The problem of the Panorama Photographer is to make it as easy as possible for the users to see what he intended them to see. This has resulted in complicated web pages, where webmasters try to detect which plugins are installed, and then using the suitable plugin.

The Adobe Flash plugin has a very large installation base (around 96 procent) but has never been used much to show Panoramas, simply because it was not able to. The Flash plugin has got more possibilities however, and version 8 and above are able to show 3D bitmap projections, and that is just what Panorama Photographers need.

The large number of people that have Flash installed will certainly make Panorama Photographers use Flash in the future for their presentations on the web. Especially since software developers are creating Flash Panorama players that are scriptable, and have a good quality. If these Flash players will make that Panorama Photographers will abandon Quicktime in the near future remains to be seen. But that it will happen, looks obvious.

Software to create Flash Panoramas:

http://www.flashpanoramas.com/
http://www.immervision.com/
http://www.pano2qtvr.com/