On Wed, 21 Oct 1998 12:30:58 GMT, povray.org admin team 
	<new### [at] DESPAMpovrayorg> wrote:

>I'd really like to see if we could implement some sort of viewer that would
>allow us to do a similar thing with a POV-Ray rendering ;)
>
>After all, the input image is probably just a large 360 degree strip made with
>one of those special cameras. With the appropriate rendering it should be
>possible to do the same thing with a plugin (perhaps not that one since it's
>likely to be Microsoft proprietary).

I can't see it, since I don't have a working IE, but I've seen similar things 
e.g. on an IBM research site.  Believe it or not, most of these panoramic 
images are now done with the aid of software from a number of normal 
photographs.  These are then perspective-corrected and composited into a 
panoramic image.  Of course, it would be much easier to create such a thing in 
POV where there actually are panoramic cameras.  

Something to think about: what happens if you render an image at say 14800x300, 
using a camera with an angle of 370 degrees, then stick it in a 400x300 window 
(with a scrollbar at the bottom)  If I'm thinking right, you'll get a 
10-degree-wide view of a panoramic scene, and you can look around by scrolling 
left and right.  Ideally, of course, you'd want to do some perspective 
correction on-the-fly, necessitating a plugin or some Java code, but if you 
keep your viewing angle small it shouldn't make much difference. 

Make it an imagemap, and you'll be able to make your own Zork:Nemesis in
plain HTML using POV.

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