I experienced a QTVR panorama for the first time back in March of 1997. It was included on the Mac Secrets 4th edition companion CD-ROM. I was instantly impressed, and, digging into the disc a little deeper, I found the free Make QTVR Panorama 1.0b4 application. Cool! I can make my own! It's free & it's easy! Or so I thought.
First, it's not that easy. Granted, it's not rocket science (at least I don't think it's rocket science), but it does get complex. And second, it's definitely not free. There is a free application to create the final output file if you have a proper image, but getting that image requires purchasing some software. And purchasing more hardware to run that software. And purchasing camera equipment to capture the images to convert in the software running on the hardware...
Now, after only a couple years and many thousands of dollars later, I REALLY CAN MAKE MY OWN! Here's a bit of a time table listing some of the major events during this time:
| March 1997 | First sighting. QTVR version 1.0 is still in it's infancy. |
| April 1997 | Using free software, I turn every image I can find into a 360° panorama (some actually look good). Also work with free object maker software. |
| June 1997 | Purchase LivePicture (now Roxio/MGI) PhotoVista 1.0, excellent stitching software. One of the original creators of QTVR, let go from Apple, designed this software. Released as a cross-platform program. Windows users creating QTVR? Weird. |
| September 1997 | Purchase Olympus D-300L digital camera. Rated best digital camera. Better camera than the Pentax 35mm point-and-shoot I was using. The whole concept of a digital camera seems to be made for QTVR. |
| November 1997 | Apple releases QuickTime VR Authoring Studio. Now I can make better objects and multi-node scenes. QTVR grows up to version 2.0. However, it'll take five months until the general public gets the updated drivers so they can use 2.0 files. |
| December 1997 | Purchase Sony TR96 8mm video camera for creating object movies. |
| March 1998 | Apple releases QuickTime version 3.0. Now people can use QTVR version 2.0 files. Unfortunately, the download from the Internet is over 6 megs. Many users don't have that much time to spend just for a plug-in. Also, a nagging window encouraging users to upgrade to a Pro version for $29 appears once per day. Needless to say, developers are not pleased. |
| April 1998 | Purchase Kaidan Kiwi+ pano head. |
| May 1998 | Purchase Macromedia Director 6.5. Now I can incorporation QTVR in multimedia presentations. |
| June 1998 | LivePicture (now Roxio/MGI) releases Reality Studio for Windows only. Uses it's own plug-in, not QuickTime. Are they trying to divide the field here? |
| June 1998 | Purchase Nikon N90s camera & Nikkor 24mm lens and other accessories. I've outgrown my digital camera. Auto-exposure Digitals can't handle bright back-lighting, and major exposure variances in the frame. Tired of spending so much time in Photoshop. |
| October 1998 | Purchase Sigma 14mm lens, a new "brighter" f/2.8 rectilinear lens. 24mm lens wasn't wide enough for indoors. |
| October 1998 | Purchase Bogen 3415 pano head. Camera with 14mm lens seems too heavy for the Kiwi+. Excellent head, can't believe it's the same price as the Kiwi+ was. |
| October 1998 | Purchase Nikon LS-2000 film scanner. Rated based film scanner. Photo CD was getting too expensive. I can scan my own negatives & slides now. Much better quality than I was getting on those damn Photo CDs! |
| December 1998 | Macromedia Director 7.0 is released. Excellent incorporation of QTVR in multimedia & shockwave. |
| January 1999 | I leave my job of seven years. I need to stop drawing an income; I'm making the camera & computer industries rich! |
| February 1999 | I hope to pursue QTVR development full time, and most importantly, professional! Has anyone ever actually gotten paid for this stuff? |
| April 1999 | QuickTime 4.0 beta is publicly released on April 19, 1999. Server side streaming is now possible. Quicktime VR becomes version 2.2, but without any specific details as to what improvements are made. |
| June 1999 | QuickTime 4.0 goes gold master on June 8th, 1999. Apple reports 3 million downloads of QuickTime 4.0, partly due to the trailer for the new Star Wars episode. |
| November 1999 | Realviz releases Stitcher (Win only at the time), a new full spherical stitcher. |
| January 2000 | QuickTime 4.1 goes gold master on January 20th, 2000. Some QuickTime developers report that they had not been given an opportunity to beta test it. As such, a serious bug affects the QuickTime browser plug-in, causing multi-node QTVR movies to link to hotspots incorrectly. Apparently, this bug affects movies that navigate hotspots via HTML embed tags (as mine do). Otherwise, the new version adds JavaScript support of the browser plug-in via Live Connect. |
| August 2000 | Purchase a Kaidan QPS-1 multi-row pan head. I test the SmoothMove software, but I am not satisfied with it, and decide to use PanoTools software instead to stitch. |
| October 2000 | QuickTime 5 Preview is released. The QuickTime Player can use custom made skins, and streaming is improved. Most importantly to QTVR, this version supports cubic panoramic, essentially full 360 degrees up and down. However, there is no stitcher, just tools to convert equirectangular or cubic faces into movies. We'll have to wait for a new stitcher. |
| December 2000 | Purchase new G4 400. What used to take all night to stitch is now done in minutes. |
| February 2001 | QuickTime 5 is officially released. Still no new stitcher from Apple. |
| April 2001 | Purchase Sigma 8mm f/40 EX lens. Just to experiment with stitching circular fisheye images. Still no new stitcher from Apple. |
| September 2001 | Purchase Canon Optura Pi DV camera for capturing object movies. Still no new stitcher from Apple. |
| November 2001 | Replace my out-dated digital camera with a new Olympus C-4040 4.1 megapixel camera. Still no new stitcher from Apple. |
| March 2002 | QuickTime 6 preview is released. No... Announced. Apparently, there are some issues with licensing MPEG-4, so it can't be distributed yet. Still no new stitcher from Apple. |
| July 2002 | QuickTime 6 is officially released. Still no new stitcher from Apple. |
| December 2003 | QuickTime 6.5 is officially released. Still no new stitcher from Apple. |
| April 2005 | QuickTime 7 is officially released. Still no new stitcher from Apple. |
During this time, there has been plenty of trial and error, learning continuously all the while. Photography in itself has been a major focus as well. I entered this with a strong computer programming background, and initially I thought I had the hard part out of the way; I assumed I would learn photography quickly. I'd have to say it isn't so. I think the photography is the most complex portion of QTVR. Planning and executing the shoot is the most important part of the process, and requires the most skill. Photography is an art form, and for good reason.
