Panoramas.dk - Full Screen QTVR Quicktime VR presented by Hans Nyberg


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Full Screen QTVR how it started
FULLSCREEN QTVR	panoramas.dk is hosted by: VRWAY

Full Screen QTVR Time Line

Since I started do QTVR in 1999 I have been interested in showing the movies in large size.I could not as a photographer see any real challenge in the small QuickTime VR movies that was common at that time.Searching for Full Screen QTVR only gave me a few pages that explained how to see it in Quicktime movie player from the harddisk.
And usually the size they talked about was 480x640 which as late as last year was standard size also on many web pages from American web sites.
In late 1999 I saw a few QTVR at the Harrods Website made by Douglas Cape displayed at 800x600.This was very well made Quicktime VR and they impressed me.
As I wanted it to be embedded in a webpage I started to do some experiments by using the K-Exe FullScreen mode in Windows Explorer. Using this you get real full screen with no frames at all. Unfortunately Mac did not have it and you still can not do it besides with Icab or Opera.
It was much to complicated for a large website as I had to use different pages for Mac and Windows and also one for Netscape.It ended up with the present solution with a simple javascript that expanded the page to any window size and with the movie set to a percentage of the window. This makes it possible to adjust for space to give copyright info and other texts.

In April 2001
my first site with Full Screen QTVR VR Aarhus was online.

At the same time as me at least 3 other photographers experimented with full screen or very large QTVR independant of each others.

Jane Fitzgerald had for some time an experimental full screen page with a few panoramas.

Erik Goetze started at about the same time as me (spring 2001) with QTVR in different sizes that filled about 80 % of the width of your window size.

He has now this week (Dec 2002) altered his pages to fill out the width 100 %.

June 2001
Charles Evans Digitalpanos also experimented with full screen and ended up with exactly the same solution as me in June 2001.

Nov 2001 my Virtual Denmark was online. Also with Full Screen option.

Feb 2002
Karl Harrison at Virtual Tour of Oxford made his first full screen page using my concept
He has now several pages within his Oxford panoramas site with Full Screen

Panoramas.dk was started in Nov. 2001 and in week 10
Marts 2002 I introduced the Full Screen Feature with one of my own as the first example and Peter Murphy as the next invited Photographer.

After Panoramas.dk had started many others took up the Full Screen idea.
Some of them use the same javascript to expand automatically to Full Screen while others just set the movie to 100% and let you adjust it manually.

Marts 2002
Jean Francois SphericWorld Featured in week 14

Marts 2002
Michel du Chesne Panoflex

In spring 2002 Switzerland launches its
new official tourist site which also displays QuickTime panoramas in a large size.

This is not Full Screen but it is the first official Tourist Site that uses large displays of QTVR. 530x830

April 2002
Bostjan Burger Slovenia

Featured in week 16

April 2002
Jook Leung 360vr >

Featured with Tribute in Light in week 17

June 2002 ?

Nico Ueckermann

Aug 4 2002
The official site of the Eiffel Tower launches a new site which includes Full Screen QTVR by Denis Gliksman

The opening is promoted by simultaneously featuring one of the panoramas at Panoramas.dk

Sept 2002
Daniel Maurer 360visits
Featured in week 41

Nov 2002 ?
U l t i m e d i a - web solutions

Nov 2002 timprod

Nov 2002
Eurofresh VR-photography service

Dec 2002 Erik Goetze VirtualParks

UPDATE JANUAR 2004

Hundreds of websites now serves QTVR in fullscreen the "Nyberg way"

FULLSCREEN Panoramas

When I started panoramas.dk in december 2001 Full Screen Quicktime VR was almost unknown. I started experimenting with it already in 1999 but at that time nothing at all existed on the internet.

In spring 2001 I started VR Aarhus in which I presented most of the QTVR in Fullscreen using the same way as I do in panoramas.dk

Read the timeline in the right column for more

Browser Problems Report Problems: hans at nyberg dot com

MacOSX: Netscape 6-7 and Mozilla have problems showing large Quicktime VR movies and sometimes also smaller. They will sometimes freeze if you try to see the fullscreens.

The last version Netscape 7.1 seems to be much better.

However one problem is that if you resize the page the movie will not stay in place anymore. It creates a Ghost image behind which even stays on the screen after you close the window.

Explorer - Safari and Camino all work OK

Mac OS - 9: If you use Netscape 4 you will not see my pages correct. You can also have problems with the first fullscreen page you open. The movie will sometimes not resize to fullscreen without reloading the page.
Explorer OS9 Warning: Do not close a fullscreen page while movie is loading.

Windows: Same as above for Netscape 4. I do not know of any problems with Explorer.

System requirements for Full Screen

Quicktime VR movies in Fullscreen uses a lot of memory for best performance. However Quicktime has a very good way of adapting its use of memory to the amount available on your computer.

This means that you can usually see also the largest movies on a very old computer (before 1999 ) but of course there will be some jerkyness in the panning. And you can also experience bad image quality when you move the panorama.

With a 350mhz Pentium or a 233 mhz Mac you should have no problems.

What sets the limit is usually the available RAM.
With only 64 mb of ram you will have problems if you have a newer system which uses lots of ram. This is the same for Windows and Mac

With a minimum of 128 mb Ram you should have no problem seeing even the largest movies.

Another important thing is your Colour setting for your monitor.

You should if possible set your colours to 24 or 32 bit (millions on a Mac)
Many people often have the colours set to 16 bit even if they have video memory (VRAM ) enough to set it to 32 bit.
This is because Windows XP is as default set to 16 bit

Read more about this and see the difference in this article about 16 bit color.

Look in your control panels for your Monitor Display (on Windows choose "settings" )

Change to 32 or 24 bit, if necessary reduce your screen resolution to minimum 800x600.

If you have VRAM enough for high resolutions there is no problem in using 1600x1200 on a large monitor. However a smaller resolution will make the movies pan more smooth.

I usually use 1600x1200 on a 22" monitor using a Mac 800mhz.

The larger monitor the more impressive the Full Screens look.

Have Fun and do not "drive too fast" I have seen people in forums describe that they gett dizzy when viewing the Fullscreens. Thats because they move the image much too fast. You actually gets the same feeling as if you turn around fast.