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Photosphere Viewer

An index of photospheres and a spherical viewer

Media and Web page Copyright © 2016, Paul LutusMessage Page

(double-click any word to see its definition)

Viewer instructions: Use your mouse to navigate the image below. Drag your mouse to pan around the image, and use your mouse wheel to change magnification (on touch screens, use two fingers to zoom in and out). For a screen-filling view, click the full-screen button at the upper left.

           

Offline Viewing Options : The "Graphic" link above provides a large (often greater than 5 megabytes in size) downoadable photosphere image suitable for use in special viewer programs that can display photospheres as they're meant to be displayed. A number of Android graphic viewers are now available (one example: "QuickPic") that display photospheres in such a way that the viewer can rotate the Android device to any compass heading and the image rotates in step. To me, this is a much better photosphere viewing experience than a normal flat display.

Virtual Reality Options : In early 2017 I changed all the downloadable photosphere files to make them compatible with virtual reality headset viewers like the Gear VR. The images linked above are ideally suited for this kind of viewer, providing spectacular images with very high resolution. Most images in the collection have dimensions of 8192x4096 pixels, which produces four times the information content of a 4K image (defined as having dimensions of 3840x2160 pixels).

In my experience with the Gear VR headset, I found the best viewing application to be the free Oculus 360 Photos app (this app provides a more detailed view than other similar apps). Just download some photospheres using the "Graphic" link above, install them onto your Android device, install and run the Oculus 360 Photos app, and choose the "My Photos" option.

Note : These copyrighted graphic downloads are for private viewing only, no distribution or publication.

Note (06.2016) : As time passes I have been replacing my earlier, low-resolution quadcopter photospheres with higher-resolution images, most having four times more image detail than earlier images, and dimensions of 8192x4096 pixels. These new images were taken with more recent quadcopters equipped with better cameras. In the above image index, titles of the newer, better images appear in this color.

Note (10.2015) : This is a new version of the photosphere gallery. This version uses the Pannellum photosphere viewer, which is better able to manage large photospheres through use of a multi-resolution scheme.


For in-depth background narratives about many of these images, be sure to visit my Alaska 2015 pages.

Click here to learn how to make your own quadcopter photospheres.

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