Panorama Viewers
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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)
- 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).
- 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).
panovieweris 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).
- pvQt is a portable panoramic image viewer with 3D rotation and perspective control, requires video hardware and driver that support at least OpenGL version 1.5, 2.0 or better for full functionality.
- 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.