Friday, June 25, 2010

Viewing 360 Panoramas on iPad and iPhone

Krpano has been quick to take up the challenge of providing a way to view 360 panoramas on iPhone and iPad devices. Neither the iPhone or iPad support Flash, preventing many applications most web users take for granted, including the most popular panorama viewers, from working on them.

Krpano have already released a Javascript based viewer that uses CSS 3D transforms to display the panoramas. Currently there are still limitations, the CSS 3D transforms used are only available as Webkit extensions in the Mobile Safari and in the Mac Safari Browsers, and the viewer will only work with Cubic panoramas.

No doubt, further developments will follow, and it will not be long before Spherical, Equirectangular, Cylindrical, Small Planet, Partial panoramas and all the other projections we like to play around with will work on these mobile devices. At Panoramic Earth, we will follow this with keen interest, and are already seeking ways of implementing this for the panoramas we have.

Flash will probably still remain popular for many panorama viewers, but this demonstrates once again how fast technology moves on the web, and how quickly developers respond to the new opportunities and challenges.

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