VR PanoWorx

Product version: VR PanoWorx v. 1.0.2

First of all, you have to tell VR PanoWorx all about your camera. Annoyingly enough this includes not only telling it your lens but also how many images you want to stitch (why does it need to ask this rather than waiting to see how many images you bother to load in?). Also you have to specify the image size in pixel dimensions - but the question that should be asked is not "what is the size" but "do you want to change it?". After all, if you use PanoWorx with a single panoramic picture (one you stitched with another program, or one created using a panoramic camera), you can then set the size to "Auto", meaning whatever the file is...

Now go to the next tab and load in your images. Here we see why we were asked in advance how many images are to be loaded: the GUI needs to know in order to display the compass like illustration.

After clicking "autostitch" on the stitch tab and letting VR PanoWorx do all the work you can tweak the stitch positions. Unfortunately however you only get to see the images on screen and cannot zoom in in order to get a better alignment. Also to move images you have to use the arrows to the left of the dialogue box - clicking and dragging with the mouse, or using the keyboard cursor keys, does not work.

One of the things you can do on the stitch tab is adjust the size of the search area used when the program tries to find alignment points

The blend tab lets you create the panorama and preview it

The hotspots tab... needs no real explanation:

You can create various kinds of hotspot, but most are merely 'placeholders' which you can use if you assemble this panorama with another into a scene using VR SceneWorx. For people who only have VR PanoWorx, the only useful hotspot is URL, which allows you to link to a URL (web page or something else) from a hotspot.

The compress tab... also needs no real explanation. The degree of control is very good here and the choice of compression codec is particularly good.

Lastly you get to preview your panorama and make some final adjustments...

... such as add text into the image, or enter meta information such as copyright. You can also set the start position, anmimation, and configure settings that affect how the panorama is displayed and how the user interacts with it (all of these are QTVR specific).

With PanoWorx v1.02 I had problems saving occasionally and got nasty Quicktime errors such as this one: