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.

A Taste of Spain, London 6th June

On the 6th of June London will see the Taste of Spain festival occupying the whole of Regent Street, between Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Street, in the heart of central London.

Supported by the Spanish Tourist Office, The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the free festival will welcome many of the Spanish regions who will add colour and flair to the capital. With giant paellas, flamenco music, medieval food markets and a range of interactive sports challenges and events, visitors will be whisked away for a day to Spain's sunnier shores.

On the 24th and 25th July the Taste of Spain festival can be found on The Mound in Edinburgh.

Language Translations

While Panoramic Earth is set up with English as the main site, we recognize that many people are interested in adding information about their places in other languages. To help with that, members can apply for access to the language admin options within their profiles. This enables you to:

• Provide local translations for the country, region and image title.
  
• Manage translations for specific locations.
• Provide local and travel information in local language.
• Change relevant meta-data to optimize these language pages within search engines.
• Link to other pages within the site.

We will continue to provide and edit English texts for locations. These pages within the site contain some advice and help with this:

• Editing Style - help about the writing style used on Panoramic Earth and easy way to link images together.
• Destination Admin Help - walk-through guide to accessing and editing location procedures.
• Translation Help - walk-through guide to the language admin sections.

These systems are already finding much support, as Manuel Ruiz says; 'Fantastic, and now I can translate the comments into Spanish. It's great! Now I can show people who speak Spanish and not English some views of my city.'

New Version of Embedded Tours

Panoramic Earth provides the opportunity to use our virtual tours as embedded content in 3rd party sites, as described on our Use a Tour page. With the launch of the new site, the style and content of these tours has been updated and the new versions are now being automatically served to our current clients.

Changing Tour Height and Width
Due to popular demand we have added the flexibility for users to alter the height of the panoramas and the maps within the tours. Within the code the following parameters can now be set:

• width - the width of the iframe (default = 600)
  
• height - the height of the iframe (default = 750 for free tours)
• maph - height of the map within the tour (default = 200)
• panh- height of the panorama within the tour (default = 220)

Where to put the changes
The default code supplied do not include maph and panh perameters. These must be entered after the key= parameter in the code.

Standard code:
<iframe name="panearthtour" id="panearthtour" width="600" height="750" frameborder="0" src="http://www.panoramicearth.com/tour.php?
key=nDA4ZSBP6v9xRjHkF8RU5dMIsZupIz7T391486bd2c3630f1de37e338eda7f514">This tour of Oahu requires iframes. If you cannot see the tour then please go to the <a href="http://www.panoramicearth.com/1607/United States of America/Oahu">Oahu page on Panoramic Earth</a>.</iframe>

Amended Code (changes in red):
<iframe name="panearthtour" id="panearthtour" width="600"
height="880" frameborder="0" src="http://www.panoramicearth.com/tour.php?
key=nDA4ZSBP6v9xRjHkF8RU5dMIsZupIz7T391486bd2c3630f1de37e338eda7f514
&maph=300&panh=250">This tour of Oahu requires iframes. If you cannot see the tour then please
go to the <a href="http://www.panoramicearth.com/1607/United
States of America/Oahu">Oahu page on Panoramic Earth</a>.</iframe>

Notes:

• The height of the iframe must be adjusted accordingly.
• Some panoramas on the sight have heights around 300 pixels high. Setting the panh parameter higher than this may result in pixilation of some images on your tour.
• In the future we will add a simple way of doing this as you create your tour on Panoramic Earth before you are given your code.

Examples of embeded tours can be found on:

• The London Map of London Attractions
  
• Kung Fu Holidays
• Funsites
  

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