Creating a Virutal Reality Viewer

How to create a 360 image with public domain tools, and wrap it in a custom player

Introduction

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a Virtual Reality 360⁰ player similar to the one displayed here:

Looking at the success of VR players such as QuickTime and iPix, I was annoyed by the huge download of one (QT) and the licensing limitations of the other. I will show you how you can use a simple digital camera to create your own VR images. Here are the ingredients:

1. A digital camera - Even a digital video camera (!) I took my first VR images with the Sony TRV-10 which is a video camera with limited still capabilities. I now use my Sony Mavica DC series. A tripod will save you a lot of work!
2. An image assembly program - Any program that will create a JPG file will do. Don't try messing with custom applications that require licensing fees for the images because there are some good products out there. My personal favorite is PanaVue's ImageAssembler for $64.00.
3. This tutorial - I have seen very few examples to this technique, and spent hours perfecting it so read on!

To explore one hidden neat feature of this VR player, click once on the movie, then use the “SHIFT” and “CTRL” keys to zoom in and out of the image. The zoom capability is documented elsewhere on Flashkit and is essentially accomplished by increasing the _width and _height of the image. There is a little catch to this: You must zoom around the location of the viewing window otherwise the zooming looks more like an unnatural “growth rather than zoom in. The zoom capability will be the subject for a separate article.