360 Panoramas With Your iPhone & iPad

Ok, 360° photos have been around forever. I remember making a few way back in the way using QuickTime VR. You needed a fancy camera mount and lots of patience to use the software.

Are they overused in higher ed? Not so much anymore, but there was a time where the 360&deg tour was a big thing. I still get calls from vendors wanting to come shoot photography on our campus to do a “interactive virtual tour,” though I’m not sure what’s interactive about scrolling left to right, but that’s for a different post.

I saw that Occiptal’s 360 Panorama app was free in the App Store yesterday, and on a whim tried it out.

Making panoramic photos was suddenly very easy and I snapped a few in my house. When I got to work, I stood in our quad with my iPhone and took this panorama:

[panoembed pano=”sS5Cpw” width=”600″ height=”300″]

You can also view a full-screen version here.

So yeah, pretty standard stuff. Here’s what takes Occipital’s app to the next level. If you can view that last link on an iPhone or iPad, Safari will sense the accelerometer and let you move around the panorama, augmented reality style. It was strange yet cool to be standing in my office moving around but seeing our campus quad moving on the iPad as I went up, down and around. Very cool use of the sensors.

If you’re producing a mobile version of a site or an app, this would be a cool addition.

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