Honest opinions please.

[Slavik]

The resolution and quality just isn't as good as it should be IMO.

I take it from your JPEGs above you are using a sort of 360 mirror to do this? These are always going to be lower res. You're better using a fisheye and a nodal ninja (or other pano head) and stitching the images which you can do with free software. Here's an example of some I've done for clients using this set-up on a Canon DSLR:

Margam Abbey
Inside a sandwich shop
Inside a fireworks shop

Even with Google coming into this area there is still scope for this service for those who want better quality 360s for their websites.

Edit - and just a personal thing, but I hate when auto rotate is set to "on"

Impressive!!!!

Can you drop me a pm with more information, the setup, the software etc?

 

[Ingenious]

Thanks, and have done. If anyone else wants to know the set-up for those just ask.

 

[=MGN=RedEagle]

Not really. It does not look good at all. Sorry man.

 

[Francesco V.]

to be honest, resolution and quality is not good on the vendor site too. Try to see it on a 1920x1080 and zoom a little bit, you see pixel and blurring

 

[craigiri]

I started fiddling with pano and object photog back in 1998 and actually got a few jobs - one doing a pano of a stadium and others doing some object photog. I'm not a photographer by any means, but I built a couple decent turntables!

Here is that old project still stored on my server!
http://hearth.com/qtvr/riversharks/index.html
Early experiments
http://hearth.com/qtvr/
Stoves with 360 (you may need to install QT plug-in)
http://www.woodstove.com/360-views

I used QT VR most of the time, although there were some java and other means.....

I have to somewhat agree that panos can be disorientating - it has to be the right subject (that stadium is a good one!)........

In terms of money making.....I think most of this has went too mainstream. Real Estate folks are doing it for free or very cheap for properties.

In short, it's a good skill to learn but your talents are probably worth more elsewhere.......or, if you want to have even more fun, start learning video photog from Drones!

 

[Ingenious]

I used QT VR most of the time, although there were some java and other means.....

I have to somewhat agree that panos can be disorientating - it has to be the right subject (that stadium is a good one!)........

In terms of money making.....I think most of this has went too mainstream. Real Estate folks are doing it for free or very cheap for properties.

Couldn't agree more, it's a bit mainstream now, though price is still a barrier to most. A set-up that will give you hi-res results like the ones I posted needs a good fisheye, pano head and DSLR. Luckily for those doing this for a living, the phone panos and the mirror attachments every man and his dog have are more novelty than quality.

Quicktime isn't really a good format these days, quite often you need an older player version to watch the 360 movies. Flash is better, but even that is old hat now. The latest versions of Pano2VR which make the end results now offer full HTML5 versions suitable for any platform including iPads.

But yes it's a great hobby, even just for showing off your house and garden to distant relatives