Brand new free Iphone app: ArounderTouch

ArounderTouch puts the whole wide world in your hand.

Now available as free download at Apple’s App store.

Created by VRWay Communication, ArounderTouch now brings Award winning Virtual Reality Panoramas from Arounder.com to your iPhone. Pre-plan your travels by experiencing up-close the historical cathedrals, renowned art museums, majestic landmarks, glorious mountain-top vistas as well as those local cafes, shops and quiet places that make each city unique. Through vivid virtual exploring, you can time travel to a location without taking a step.

Ah, but you really want to be there! ArounderTouch offers assistance with real life travel too. With a click, call or send an email to a hotel, restaurant or shop you want to contact. And, once at your desired destination, roam to your heart’s content without feeling lost. There’s the “nearby” button that will locate where you are and all the “must see” sights in the surrounding area. Also save your preferred locations – hotels, restaurants, shops – for return visits.

With this first release ArounderTouch features the very best of Europe in over 3000 VR Panoramas that include the following cities: Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Berne, Bruges, Bruxelles, Como, Copenaghen, Cyprus, Florence, Helsinki, Jungfrau, Koeln, Lisbon, Lugano, Luxembourg, Madrid, Milan, Monaco, Oslo, Paris, Parma, Pisa, Prague, Rhodos, Rome, Stockholm, Turin, Valencia, Venice, Verona, Vienna, and Zermatt as well as many more metropolitan sites.

Now available as free download at Apple’s App store.

Best iPhone apps at AppStoreHQ

Kraków catacombs by Szymon zbooy Medej

A great new project from Zbooy:

“The catacombs in the crypt under the Reformed Franciscan church are among
some of the most secret places in the city. Unique climatic conditions found
in the basement caused the bodies of the dead to undergo a process of
natural mummification whereby they remain in an excellent state of
preservation. Among them, hidden away since 1667, are the remains of many
monks and members of Polish noble families. Monastic books reveal that in
total almost 1,000 bodies were placed in the catacombs over the years, among
them around 730 lay people and 250 monks. The crypts, now holding only about
a hundred bodies, are now made available for public viewing just once or
twice a year, traditionally on All Souls’ Day (November 2nd), the day after
All Saints’ Day. In the past, the mummies attracted crowds of visitors,
causing adverse climatic challenges.

Seven panoramas and about 50 photographs can be viewed here.

CAUTION: you may find some imagery quite disturbing.

As the monks say in the leaflet: “This is not a museum but a cemetery.
Respect solemnity of this place and say a prayer for the dead.” It’s not
meant to cause sensation but it is a memento to our fragility, reminding us
that after death we are all equal.”

Kiziliburun: Shipwreck Panoramas 150 Feet Underwater

Excerpt from Drew Fulton’s post on PanotoolsNG list:
“I spent last summer working as a photographer on an archaeological excavation of a 1st Century BC, Roman shipwreck off the coast of Turkey.

My main focus was creating spherical panoramas of the site, 150′ underwater. It proved extremely challenging as the camera I was supposed to use (owned by the excavation) never worked during my entire stay. Eventually, I got my hands on a D200 with 10.5 fisheye in a Sea&Sea housing that worked for my last two weeks. I built a homemade pano head and did a couple hand held. Dealing with the low light and extreme light fall off as well as the high amount of setiment in the water column from the excavation was a bit of a nightmare. A absolute limit of 20 minutes on the bottom for each dive didn’t help either. I just posted a bit of information about the excavation as well as four of the panoramas on my blog. Be sure to check it out. I would make some major changes to the setup if I was going to do it again but since I was working at such a remote field site in Turkey, I just didn’t have many options and had to deal with what I had available”

London Aerial Virtual Tour by Tom Mills

Panodigg is a cool place to find great new VR tours. I just found Tom Mills (vrwebdesign.co.uk) last creation, an extensive aerial panoramic coverage of London.

Tom says he was inspired by the fantastic photography of Oleg Gaponyuk and design by Pixelcase, from the New York virtual tour.

london-aerial-virtual-tour

Historic Route 66 Panoramas

Historic Route 66

Enjoy a beautiful series of panoramas shot by Assaf during his trip on the Historic Route 66.
You can read about his trip and much more, on his blog Vuoto Siderale.

Historic Route 66

Another PanoBaby: Jeffrey Martins son Benjamin

This pano is from 2008, when Benjamin Martin was born. I just discovered it now, and thought to add it to the PanoBaby collection. All the best for your life, be it long and rewarding dear Benjamin.

Benjamin Martin

Fly Geyser Black Rock Desert Nevada by Howard Goldbaum

Located on a gated parcel of private property within the million-acre Black Rock Desert, Fly Geyser is not a natural phenomenon. It was created accidentally in 1964 from a geothermal test well inadequately capped. The scalding water has erupted from the well since then, leaving calcium carbonate deposits growing at the rate of several inches per year. The brilliant red and green coloring on the mounds is from thermophilic algae thriving in the extreme micro-climate of the geysers.

Fly Geyser

Panorama found on Howard Goldbaum’s site allaroundnevada.com.
He is a professor at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, teaching multimedia courses where students create “sense of place media,” with the goal of creating digital verisimilitude.

Rio2016 at Copacabana Beach by Ayrton

Thousands of Brazilians at Copacabana Beach celebrating the Victory for the Olympic Games 2016. A great group panorama with sound published by Ayrton on his VR blog . Link to fullscreen panorama.

Rio2016 at Copacabana Beach

Welcome Calista, Live long and prosper.

Since I have become father myself I particularly enjoy panobaby VR’s. Gregory Panayotou, the creator of the great VR Blog direct2brain and his wife Matilde had a baby, 3 months ago, the beautiful Calista. I I want to wish them all to live a long, prosper and fulfilling life.

live long and prosper calista

Tristan Shu is back with an amazing aerial VR Panorama

After a long break, pioneer of extreme VR photography Tristan Shu is back with an amazing panorama. We featured his panoramas in VRMag several times in the past, and are really happy to see him in activity again. Don’t miss to check out his website.
You might want to check the Panogoogle search results For Tristan Shu here.

Tristan Shu parapente