This is a demonstration project using spherical VR imaging to document the 18th century astronomical observatories built at Jaipur and Delhi, India under the direction of Maharajah Jai Singh II of Jaipur. To explore the interactive panoramas you will need version 5 or later of Apple's QuickTime plug in for your browser. If you do not see an image in the box below, you do not have QuickTime installed.

The latest version of the plug-in is free and available for Mac and Windows on Apple's web site. Click on the link below to download the QuickTime plug-in and follow the installation instructions.

Sample one is a brief tour of the Jaipur Observatory, allowing you to visit 5 locations at the site. Each provides a panoramic view from that location To change the direction of the view, place the mouse cursor within the image and "drag" to cause the image to move. At the bottom of the image is a control panel with + and - buttons to zoom in or out (you may also use keyboard shortcuts "shift" to zoom in, "ctrl" to zoom out. "Hotspots" within the image (the cursor changes to a globe) are links to viewpoints in the vicinity of the hotspot. Clicking the mouse when the cursor displays a globe will take you to that location. clicking the "?" symbol in the control panel will reveal hotspots embedded in the panoramic images.

Sample two is a more extensive tour at higher resolution. If you do not have a high speed connection there will be a delay while the VR image loads when you navigate from place to place.

Sample One - Low Resolution VR Tour
(will open in new window)

Sample Two - High Resolution VR Tour
(will open in new window)

Spherical Rendering

A spherical rendering presents all of the visual information from the panoramic image in a 1:2 rectangular format. In the example below, if you were to connect the left edge to the right edge, you would see that the image is continuous. The top and bottom edges represent the top and bottom poles of the spherical VR panorama, and in the rendering process, the image is stretched as it approaches the top and bottom poles.

Click on the image to open a gallery of spherical renders in a new browser window.

updated 8/27/04