St Martin in the Fields Church Virtual Tour

St Martin in the Fields is a famous church in London, found on the north east corner of Trafalgar Square. The current church was designed by James Gibbs in the early 18th century. At the time it was built, the church stood in a field part way between the City of Westminster and the City of London. In 2006 a Roman grave was found on the site, indicating that the site had been used as a religious place of worship for hundreds of years.

This interactive, 360 panorama shows the interior of the church. It was taken by Peter Watts in September 2013.

Panorama of St Martin in the Fields Church supplied by Panoramic Earth

Today, St Martin in the Fields is a popular concert venue, with classical concerts and organ recitals often being held in the church itself. Beneath the church, in the Crypt Cafe, jazz concerts are often held. Being right next to Trafalgar Square, the church is also a popular tourist attraction. It is also the parish church of Buckingham Palace, Number 10 (Downing Street) and the Admiralty.

Virtual Tour of The Stawamus Chief

The Stawamus Chief, most commonly known simply as The Chief, is a massive granite monolith about an hour outside Vancouver and just south of Squamish. Towering over 700m above the Howe Sound, it is a very popular hiking destination in the summer months, offering unparalleled views over the surrounding area. It is also very popular with climbers worldwide, offering plenty of opportunities for all levels.

The Chief has three peaks, each of which is accessible by foot. Most people climb to the lowest, First, peak for the views. The 360 panoramic image below is taken from the Second peak, showing the view over Squamish and the Howe Sound. From here it is a short traverse past a dramatic chasm to the top of the Third Peak, 702m above sea level.

Panorama of The Stawamus Chief supplied by Panoramic Earth

A number of routes ascend The Chief, all starting from the same trailhead near the carpark and campsite. A part of the way the trail splits with one branch ascending a very steep gully to the Third Peak directly. The other continues up for some distance more before splitting again with separate trails leading to the First and Second Peaks.

All the trails are rugged and steep, but the views at the top are well worth the effort. Panoramic Earth now holds a number of virtual tour images taken on various parts of The Chief, providing the most comprehensive virtual tour available of the second largest granite monolith in the world.

360 Panorama of London from The Shard

London has a new viewing platform, on level 72 of The Shard, the second highest building in the EU. To celebrate this The Shard has produced an interactive 360 virtual tour panorama showing the view over London. Taken from 245m above ground level, the panorama is peppered with hotspots giving information about various landmarks and places of interest. 

Also within the image are links to various sounds recorded around the city as part of the London Sound Survey Project. There is the famous peal of bells from St Paul's Cathedral, monkeys from London Zoo and MP's (sounding much like the monkeys) from within Parliament.

The Shard is the tallest building in the United Kingdom. It is fully 309.6m (1,016 ft) tall with 95 floors topped out with a spire. You can find out more about it on Wikipedia.

This is not the biggest panorama of London. That honour goes to the massive 320 +Gigapixel image taken from BT Tower, which was the largest ever created in the world. However, I prefer this one for the interactivity and clarity of landscape.

So what is your favourite part of this image?

Ricoh Displays Single Shot 360 Spherical Panorama Camera

Ricoh have been working on a very small, portable device that takes a spherical 360 panorama in one shot and sends it automatically to a smartphone or tablet. It uses two 180-dgree lenses, combining the image internally before sending the result for viewing.



At this point there was no information about image size and resolution. Currently it only takes stills, but the company is considering trying to also capture video. At this point there. As the Ricoh demonstrator explains: 

 "It has two fish-eye lenses, each of which covers 180 degrees. The camera combines the two pictures, and sends them via Wi-Fi to a tablet or smartphone for viewing. The idea is, the pictures you take arrive automatically. When viewing it like a regular panoramic image, you can also see up and down. When you pull out from the image, it finally becomes a circle, and you can also look at it as a sphere." 

"This camera represents a step beyond SLRs and compact cameras. The project began with the idea that, if taking spherical panoramic photos was easy, the results might be fun. Currently, the camera takes still photos. But we'd like to enable it to handle video, too. We're still just presenting this technology, so the specs haven't been decided yet. Right now, we're at the stage of seeing how people react. If people think this camera is fun, we'd like to commercialize it, and make it a bit smaller. We want to keep developing it, so we can offer a version for consumers." 

 "This is a project we're discussing with staff at art colleges. We think this technology could also be presented as a "panorama ball," where the pictures are stuck onto a sphere."

360 Panorama of Whole Night Sky

Every so often something amazing comes along that truly has the capacity to make one stop and just go 'Wow'. The Photopic Sky Survey is one of those things. Photographer Nick Risinger travelled nearly 60,000 miles taking individual images of the night time sky and then painstakingly stitched them together to form a composite 360° night time panorama.

The task was painstaking, dividing the sky into 624 uniformly spaced areas and then seeking out light-free places from which to capture the images using 6 cameras. Each sector was photographed 60 time using 4 short, 4 medium, and 4 long shots for each camera to help to reduce the amount of noise, overhead satellite trails and other unwanted artifacts.

The result is stunning. A fully interactive spherical image that shows the night sky if one was suspended in space where the earth should be. The Milky Way and other galaxies can be explored, zoomed in on and panned around. As if that was not enough, the interactive image can be overlaid with the stellar constellations sky map.

This is a truly amazing achievement. And now to find a HD projector and blank wall...

Beautiful Panorama of Rome

Just one of the many dramatic 360° panoramic views and virtual tours of Rome. This one was created from a series of images taken on a sunny day while walking around the Cupola of St Peters Basilica in the Vatican. It provides a dramatic 360 view of the Roman skyline.

Panorama of Rome from the Vatican Cupola supplied by Panoramic Earth

See the complete virtual tour of Rome, featuring pictures and information from many of the most important and popular landmarks and tourist attractions around the city, or search out your favourite place on the Rome panorama index.

Travelling to Rome? Check out these cheap Rome hotel deals.

Embed Single Panorama Option Launched

Panoramic Earth has just launched the ability for non-commercial websites to embed individual 360° panoramas within your own websites for free. So creators of blogs, personal sites etc can now embed stunning, full screen panoramas within their pages, absolutely free. Please see the Terms and Conditions for details, register with Panoramic Earth and follow the procedure given below.

Embedding Panoramas Step 1
Below every panorama is an EMBED button, as shown below. Simply click on this to start the procedure.

Embedding Panoramas Step 2
Select the Single Image Embedding radial and then click on Continue as shown below.


Embedding Panoramas Step 3
Select the height and width you want to have on your site. The code will be recalculated. Then click on Select to select all the code presented as shown below. Simply copy this and paste it into your web page. Job done. The code must be used in it's entirety, without changing any part of it. This is part of the T&C's for this service.


Embedding Panoramas - The Result And the result is a stunning image within your website, as shown here for the Colosseum in Rome.

Panorama of Colosseum of Rome supplied by Panoramic Earth

Enjoy. If enough people ask for alternative methods of embedding, such as iframes, then we will look into implementing these too.

Virtual Tour of Florence

Florence from Giotto's Campanile. 360 panorama (c) Peter Watts - all rights reserved

Florence is one of the top travel and tourist destinations in Italy. At the heart of Tuscany, and once the capital of a united Italy, Florence is full of history, historical buildings and famous works of art. This new Florence virtual tour shows 360 panoramas of the sights and attractions, churches, public squares and other views.

Florence from Ponte Santa Trinita. 360 panorama (c) Peter Watts - all rights reserved

As usual with Panoramic Earth, these 50+ images are all accompanied with some local and travel information, and can be embedded by other websites as their own content. Included within the tour are stunning panoramas taken around Florence Cathedral, including a unique virtual tour of the interior of the Baptistery of San Giovanni, taken as not even local Florentines see it, without people present.

Viewing 360 Panoramas on iPad and iPhone

Krpano has been quick to take up the challenge of providing a way to view 360 panoramas on iPhone and iPad devices. Neither the iPhone or iPad support Flash, preventing many applications most web users take for granted, including the most popular panorama viewers, from working on them.

Krpano have already released a Javascript based viewer that uses CSS 3D transforms to display the panoramas. Currently there are still limitations, the CSS 3D transforms used are only available as Webkit extensions in the Mobile Safari and in the Mac Safari Browsers, and the viewer will only work with Cubic panoramas.

No doubt, further developments will follow, and it will not be long before Spherical, Equirectangular, Cylindrical, Small Planet, Partial panoramas and all the other projections we like to play around with will work on these mobile devices. At Panoramic Earth, we will follow this with keen interest, and are already seeking ways of implementing this for the panoramas we have.

Flash will probably still remain popular for many panorama viewers, but this demonstrates once again how fast technology moves on the web, and how quickly developers respond to the new opportunities and challenges.

Singapore - High Resolution Panoramas

Raffles Landing Site, Singapore. 360 panorama (c) Peter Watts - all rights reserved

There are now over 100, high resolution, 360° virtual tour panoramas from Singapore now on Panoramic Earth. These images cover many of the sights and attractions of Singapore city and the wider island. They show various shots of the skyscrapers around Boat Bay and Clarke Quay, but also the interior of many temples and churches, some from Singapore Zoo and some of Sentosa Island.

The latest image is a hand-held panorama taken inside the shark's tunnel at the Underwater World Attraction on Setnosa Island, shown below.

Sharks Tunnel - Underwater World, Singapore. 360 panorama (c) Peter Watts - all rights reserved

Panoramic Earth - New Site Launched!

Panoramic Earth (v3.0) is finally here. After months of planning and effort the new site has finally arrived. The site has many new features and a completely new look and feel, making it easier to navigate and more informative. Among the new features include:

• Accepts Spherical as well as Cylindrical panoramas.
• Faster loading flash panorama viewer.
  
• Full screen viewing options of high resolution images.
• Easy to follow upload interface.
• Multi-language support.
• Updated, faster Google maps.
• Special Article pages.

This, however is not the end, we will continue working to add more features in the future. Please come and visit the new site, and leave feedback in the comments below. We would really like to know of development ideas you may have - you never know, we may well pick it up and add it to the next list! Happy viewing, Panoramic Earth Team

1900 Panoramas

Panoramic Earth now features over 1900 panoramas taken from around the world. Each 360 panorama comes with photographers comments and some local information, making it a kind of guide to places. The latest panoramas come from Mount Mauganui in New Zealand, the Tian Tan Buddha in Hong Kong and Central Park in New York.

Mount Maunganui, New Zealandpanorama (c) Peter Watts - all rights reserved

Central Park , New York

panorama (c) Peter Watts - all rights reserved

Tian Tan Buddha, Hong Kongpanorama (c) Peter Watts - all rights reserved

800 panoramas and coutning...

There are now more then 800 panoramas on Panoramic Earth. The 800th location is a panorama of Old Town Square, Prague. This is known in Czeck as Staroměstské náměstí, and is one of the more popular tourist attractions in the city. The panorama is shown below.

panorama (c)Peter Watts, all rights reserved.

The number of panoramas shown on the site continues to grow. This panorama was taken by Peter Watts, who has added the following description to accompany the image:

• "A panorama taken from the Old Town Square (Staroměstské náměstí) right at the center of Prague, one of the most popular travel destinations in Europe. This panoramic picture shows such attractions as the Jan Hus Monument, the Astronomical Clock, the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, and St. Nicholas Church. The famous Astronomical Clock is also located nearby. Prague is a beautiful city and a lovely one to take panoramic pictures of."