These images were created using LivePicture's PhotoVista image-stitching application. Thanks to LivePicture's Java viewer applet, you can scroll and zoom your way around these pictures from the comfort of your own browser screen.
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You'll need a Java-enabled browser to view these panoramas. There's no installation process - the Java viewer applets are downloaded and executed automatically. If this doesn't work, check that your browser has Java support switched on (in IE4, check that it's enabled for this security zone).
Viewing Tips - When the image is first loaded, it starts to auto-scroll to the right, enabling you to just sit back and watch. As soon as you hit a key or click the mouse on the image, it stops auto-scrolling. To start auto-scrolling again, press your browser's Reload (Netscape) / Refresh (Internet Explorer) page button (Netscape will restart the image without downloading it again, but Internet Explorer seems to want to download the whole image again, shame on it!) Backwards and Forwards also downloads the image again with Explorer, but Netscape will just restart the auto-scroll.
To control scrolling yourself, use the cursor (arrow keys) (left/right and up/down), or click on the image, hold the mouse button down and drag the pointer in the direction you want to scroll. Dragging the mouse pointer further away from the point at which you clicked increases the speed of scrolling (keyboard-controlled scrolling is single-speed only). As soon as you release the key or mouse button, the image stops scrolling.
Pressing A on the keyboard zooms into the image - you can then scroll up and down to see the vertical area you want. Pressing Z zooms back out. The images contain only enough pixels to fill the viewing window height (in order to keep the file size down), but mild zooming-in still gives a good effect.
The useful-to-know stuffThere will be an extra delay of around 45 to 100 seconds (depending on your modem speed) the first time you access a panorama page, while your browser downloads the viewer applets. After that, the applets will be stored in your browser's cache ("Temporary Internet Files" Folder), so you don't have to download it again. Because the applets are the same for all pages, you only have to download them once, for the first panorama page you access.
Image files are also stored in your browser's cache, so you'll be able to re-view pages without waiting for the images to download. However applet and image files are eventually discarded from browser caches, so to keep a panorama page permanently on your local disk, use an offline storage package such as Web Whacker.
Note - the Java viewer applets used by these pages are copyright LivePicture Inc. Please don't attempt to save them from these pages for use with your own pictures. The applets can be downloaded (subject to terms and conditions) direct from www.livepicture.com.
The "how do they do that?" stuffPhotoVista takes a series of image files (JPGs or GIFs) and 'stitches' them together to form a single, super-wide image. As well as lining the source images up automatically, it also 'warps' them so that their perspective looks correct as you pan across the big picture. With enough source pictures, the resulting image can be a full 360° circle.
PhotoVista comes with a stand-alone viewer application, which lets you pan and zoom around an image. The viewer is also provided as a Java applet, which works within a Web browser and is used in these pages.