Viewing Panoramas Using Live Picture

This document describes how to view a panoramic image using the Live Picture browser, version 1.0.  Because this browser runs in Java, it does not require any special plugin—anyone with a Java-enabled web browser should be able to view your panorama.  To see what you will get, click here.

It's pretty easy to set up. 

Step 1. You need two files

• pano.jpg   cylindrical panorama image in jpeg format

• pano.ivr        IVR file specifying field of view and location of java applets

The IVR file should look like:

#VRML V2.0 utf8

NavigationInfo {
    type "VISTA"
    headlight FALSE
} 
Vista {
    texture ImageTexture { url "./pano.jpg" }
    type "CYLINDER"
    vFov -0.5 0.5
    pitchRange -0.5 0.5
}

vFov is vertical field of view of the panorama (in this case, -0.5 radians to 0.5 radians).  pitchRange should be set to be the same as vFov.  Ideally, vFov should correspond to the field of view of your camera.  If the panorama has been cropped, however, vFov will be cropped accordingly.  For instance, deleting the bottom 1/2 of a panorama with vertical field of view (-pi/4, pi/4) would yield a vFov of (0, pi/4).  If you don't know the field of view, you can just tweak the vFov until the panorama looks right--you know it's wrong if the image is stretched or straight lines in the scene are not straight in the image.  Make sure to change pitchRange accordingly.

Step 2. Download the following two files

• lpjpano.zip

• lpjpano.cab

and put them in the same directory with pano.jpg and pano.ivr

Step 3. Write a simple html file that indicates where pano.ivr is. Click here and view page source in your browser for an example. All you need to change is to replace the ivr file with your own.

The following instructions have been tested for department Firefox browser on both Windows and Linux. Depending on your graphics card performance, the panoramic video may jitter.