Historical:QTVRAS

The QuickTime VR Authoring Studio (aka QTVRAS) is a Classic only program by Apple to stitch images and output in different QuickTime VR formats.

QTVRAS replaced Apple's earlier solution for the creation of VR content, the "QuickTime VR Authoring Tools Suite" (introduced in 1996), and was sold in the initial release version 1.0 from 1997 until Apple ceased to sell PPC Macs. In 1998 Apple released the only update to version 1.0.1 which is available via Apple's knowledge base article #30817. QTVRAS still works in the Classic environment of OS X, i.e. only on pre Intel Macs. A later patch to increase the fov limit is available from Ken Turkowski's page about QuickTime VR Authoring Tricks. The cubic panorama format was introduced at a later time when third party software companies already had solutions to create QTVR movies.

QTVRAS has five modules:

• Object Maker creates object movies from several input images. These can also be captured with a video camera directly from the Object Maker interface. Images can be ordered, rows, columns and layers can be defined. Such movies tend to get huge since a lot of images are needed to avoid a jerky movement.
• Panorama Maker converts PICT files with cylindrical projection to single or even multinode QTVR movie files.
• Panorama Stitcher stitches cylindrical panoramas from a set of images with only a few options .
• Project Manager helps to organise the complete workflow of VR projects.
• Scene Maker connects different types of nodes with embedded hotspots, the result can be saved e.g. as a one file multinode movie.