Panorama 360º photos

Pros and cons of 360 images

360 images are facinating, but there are some drawbacks. The following pros and cons are Hans' opinions:

Pros

• One exposure, a lot of area covered.
• Flat images can be extracted from the 360 image.
• The viwer can navigate in image to get an idea of the area.
• Hot spots with text or navigation hyperlinks can be integrated.
• 360-navigation is locked to a natural view, not as in rotation of 3D-objects in CAD-viewers.

Cons

• Time consuming to select the best picture, since rotation is required.
• The source format from the camera must be converted to jpg for pictures and mpg for video, in an application, selecting size and quality parameters.
• To view image and video on the web, javascript+css-player must be integrated. This in contrast to non-360 video that is supported in HTML and web browsers since some years, and requires no separate player.
• Hot spots are not integrated in the picture/video. They are overlayed in separate HTML code.