QuickTime VR creates an immersive, photorealistic experience simulating actual or imagined three-dimensional objects and places. Unlike other virtual reality implementations, QuickTime VR does not require special goggles or gloves, and it doesn't need you to download a custom 3D plug-in to work with any application or web browser. All major applications that play QuickTime movies can also play QuickTime VR movies. There are two main types of QuickTime VR movies - QuickTime VR Panoramas and QuickTime VR Object Movies.
QuickTime VR panoramas create the experience of standing in a space and looking in all directions--360 degrees side-to-side, even 120 degrees overhead and underfoot--with the view panning smoothly wherever you look. Panoramas are ideal for educational websites, architectural walkthroughs, real estate listings, and photoreal gaming environments.
A QuickTime VR panorama is actually a carefully calibrated series of photographs or 3D graphics images, stitched and blended together with QuickTime VR authoring software and mapped onto the inside of a virtual cylinder. You see part of the projection through the QuickTime VR window; you scroll to see other parts using the mouse.
QuickTime VR panoramas can be linked to create large immersive environments accessible from a series of viewpoints, or nodes. A linked series of nodes is called a multinode panorama. You move from node to node--from viewpoint to viewpoint--by clicking on hotspots (up to 255 per panorama). Authoring applications--such as Apple's QuickTime VR Authoring Studio--contain tools for embedding navigational controls and markers right in the environment, making it easy for your audience to find its way around.
QuickTime VR object movies depict objects that can be "handled"--turned, tilted, and spun--so you can see them from every angle. Object movies are great for displaying retail items on the web or for allowing virtual manipulation and study of artworks, scientific and medical models, product parts, and other real objects.
Object movies are created by photographing or rendering a series of views of the object at carefully spaced angles of tilt and rotation and assembling the view images into a movie. Each view of the object doesn't have to be a still image; it can also be a video clip or animation. For example, the front view of a car could show the hood opening to reveal the engine.
Hotspots can also link to URLs or media files or even to QuickTime VR object movies, so that objects seen in panoramas can be picked up and handled.