Panorama Viewers

There are basically three types of viewers for spherical panoramas:

• Java based Viewers run on any platform that supports Java.
• Plugin based viewers require a plugin (Quicktime, Shockwave) to run and might be platform specific.
• Stand alone viewers that are executables for a specific platform.

Java based Viewers

Free

• First and until now most versatile is PTViewer developed originally by Helmut Dersch and now maintained and enhanced by Fulvio Senore

• Panorado Applet - a free java viewer applet - "flat" view, but very fast, thus suited for larger images.

• PURE Player for Java (by ImmerVision) is a free Java viewer applet that supports cylindrical, spherical and cubic panoramic images.

• PURE Player for PRO Java (by ImmerVision) is a free Java viewer applet that supports cylindrical, spherical and cubic panoramic images. It also supports user interfaces.

Commercial

There are some commercial Java based viewers. Most of them are either a PTViewer clone or less functional.

Plugin based Viewers

Free

• Quicktime is available for Apple Macintosh and Windows. Requires panorama in QTVR movie format. (PanoCube or Pano2QTVR convert from equirectangular to .mov on Windows)

• freepv is an open source cross-platform viewer for QTVR and other panorama formats.

• DevalVR is a windows plugin for viewing panoramic content.

Commercial

• PangeaVR is a viewer for Mac OSX only that displays both cubic QuickTime-VR panoramas in QTVR movie format and equirectangular (spherical) JPEG panoramas by Brian Greenstone. See http://www.pangeasoft.net/pano/plugin/pangeavr.html for details.

Flash or Shockwave based Viewers

Free

• SPi-V is a very sophisticated and smooth viewer based on Macromedia Shockwave that handles panoramas completely in graphics card memory (free version with logo).

• fspp is an open source, Flash 9 based player for panoramas in equirectangular format.

• PanoSalado is an open source Flash based viewer for cubic, equirectangular (spherical), cylindrical and QTVR panoramas. It supports 2D & 3D hotspots, audio, video, and being extended via XML or directly via Actionscript (AS3). See PanoSalado's blog, download source and examples from the GoogleCode repository, and view a live example.

• PURE Player for Flash is a free Flash 9 based player that supports cylindrical, spherical and cubic panoramas.

Commercial

• The Flash Panorama Player is a cross-platform viewer that displays QTVR movies as well as equirectangular (spherical) and cylindrical panoramas. Cube faces and stripes can also be handled. It supports SWF-plugins to extend its functionality (for example to integrate distorted FLV-movies as hotspots).

• Pano2VR (former Pano2QTVR) creates Flash 8 or Flash 9 SWF files with included spherical viewer.

• krpano is a flash 9 based panorama viewer, see http://krpano.com/

Stand alone Viewers

• FSPViewer is a free hardware accelerated stand alone viewer by Fulvio Senore (Windows only).

• panoglview is an Open Source hardware accelerated stand alone viewer for Equirectangular Projection images (Windows, Linux and OS X).

• panoviewer is an Open Source stand-alone viewer now superceded by panoglview (Windows, Linux).

• PTViewer, the original standalone viewer created by Helmut Dersch in C for X-Windows available from one of the mirrors (Linux) or the 3.2 version in compiled Java from his page (Windows).

• Quicktime also works as a standalone viewer (Windows, Mac).

• DevalVR has a stand alone version, too (Windows).

• freepv is a standalone hardware accelerated QTVR viewer as well as a plugin.

• Panorado is a full-featured image viewer/browser supporting panoramas (JPEG & QTVR). Shareware. (Windows)

• PURE Player for Windows is a free standalone version of PURE Player viewer for Windows OS that supports cylindrical, spherical and cubic panoramas.

• PURE Player for Pocket PC is a free standalone version of PURE Player viewer for Windows Mobile 5 OS that supports cylindrical, spherical and cubic panoramas.