Visualisation of Panoramic Images over the Internet

In the early 1990s, panoramic photography made its appearance in the literature of computer graphics, digital image processing and computervision communities already with a long tradition [1] of its own. In computer graphics, the idea of rendering novel views from suitable collec-tions of images (called image-based rendering) rather than from 3D models (called model-based rendering) attracted a lot of attention because of its potential of bypassing the difficulties of both 3D modelling real objects and of rendering photorealistic scene illuminations.[2-6] Within the image-based rendering framework, panoramic images became a very popular tool for representing complex real environments, i.e. for obtaining ‘environment map’ to use in virtual tours of building, cities and the like. In this connection, the work of [7] deserves a special mention as it led to a commercial product called QuickTime VR, which was very successful and which was the first of a series of many authoring tools for panoramic images.