Panorama Viewer

In the past, we could only experience places we had never visited through pictures or video, where the viewing angle is fixed to whatever the camera was pointed at and cannot be explored freely. As panoramic images became common, we gained the ability to roam a scene from any viewpoint on a computer or mobile device, rotating freely to look around — much like Google Maps Street View.

Beyond Street View, anyone can shoot panoramic images with a panorama camera and assemble their own virtual tour through a panorama viewer. In existing viewers, users must click a scene-switch button on screen to move between scenes, which interrupts the immersive feeling of the tour.

We propose a new panorama viewer and a set of panorama editing tools. A finger-zoom gesture triggers the scene transition, and a scene-set architecture reduces the frame clutter of large virtual tours. Editors build a tour through the editing tools, and visitors move between scenes with an intuitive zoom gesture while they browse.