| A VR panorama (VR for virtual reality) is a specially created computer image that goes all the way around the viewer. It is a revolutionary way to document a particular place and time – the next best thing to being there.
VR panoramas are interactive. You can use the mouse to rotate the panorama, use Shift and Control to zoom in and out. Some VR panoramas are cylinders, 360° around but with limited vertical view. Others are cubic (or spherical), with a view that can go straight up and straight down, as well as all the way around. There are also VR objects, where the viewer rotates or circles around an object of interest.
VR photography (also called immersive imagery) is virtual travel, real geography, genuine art, and great entertainment. It is a glimpse into other people's lives, a look around in places we have never been and may never go. It can be unique personal views of the world or dispassionate photojournalism. It deserves to be seen by more people.
VR photography (using Apple's QuickTime and other technologies) has been around for about nine years now. A small number of enthusiasts have been making VR panoramas, and collectively they have published tens of thousands of amazing images on web sites, a visual catalog of fascinating places around the world.
But the world in general seems hardly to have noticed.
As part of an effort to correct this, Don Bain and Landis Bennett suggested a coordinated VR panorama shoot on the day of the Equinox, March 20. They put the word out through e-mail lists and web sites. VR photographers around the world responded enthusiastically, and the project rapidly gained momentum.
- Three weeks after the equinox the site is now ready:
- http://geoimages.berkeley.edu/wwp304/
The World Wide Panorama web site is a very democratic statement - anyone who wanted to participate and managed to generate a usable panorama was included. Many of the leading professional VR photographers also participated, contributing images of consummate craft and artistry. In all there are 180 photographers represented on the site, from 40 countries.
Most of the panoramas have a full-screen version which expands to fill the largest monitor, many are fully cubic (up and down as well as around) and some are accompanied by sound.
The range of environments depicted on the WWP web site is staggering, from the desert heat of Baja California to the frozen Gulf of Finland, from springtime cherry blossoms in Seattle and Los Angeles to blustery late winter in the British Isles and the Netherlands. Some photographers sought out high places: the Hancock Building in Chicago, a windy ridgetop in Norway, Irazu Volcano in Costa Rica. Others found low places: Badwater below sea level in Death Valley, and the entrance to Pluto's Hades in Slovenia, where a river plunges underground. There are awe inspiring vistas high in the Alps and serene scenes on the California coast.
The range of subjects is impressively wide, from familiar landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty, Ipanema Beach in Rio, and the Taj Mahal, to street markets in Germany and Denmark, a child's birthday party, a cellar, and even a bathroom.
There are people doing interesting things: "sugaring off" in Quebec, getting married in New Jersey, planting a garden in East Los Angeles. There is a peace march in Hollywood, and tributes to the late Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, Princess Diana, and John Lennon. Rich and poor are here too, from a yacht show in Dubai, to a Romany (gypsy) encampment near Rome.
Sunrise provided dramatic lighting: dawn from a mountaintop on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, and a morning view of San Francisco from Treasure Island. There are beautiful night-time scenes from Belgium and Austria.
History abounds, with a Stonehenge-like megalithic site in Denmark, the burial site of Saint Patrick, the grave of Rabbi Isaac Luria in Israel, pagodas in Japan, and a monument to the Canadian women who established that legally "women are persons". There are ancient cities like Bologna, and the soon to be world's tallest building in Taiwan.
There are views from countries that have opened to the world since the end of the Cold War: Tallinn in Estonia, Kiev in the Ukraine, Chongquing in China.
There are unusual views of the world, including one made with ultra-violet and infra-red light, the invisible made visible, and an eerie art project in London. One image is in red/cyan stereo. A panorama at the pyramids of Giza has been edited so it might as well have been taken in 1904 as in 2004. A starkly beautiful forest in France is done in classic black and white. Careful examination of a street scene in Northern Ireland shows several sets of identical twins (an artifact of the multi-shot panorama technique). And a fountain in Barcelona is revealed as the viewer circles around it (a VR object, rather than a panorama).
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