For several years I was fascinated with QTVR and even investigated working as a service provider to real estate agents producing panoramas of houses going on the market. I’m glad I didn’t get seriously into that business, as ultimately I would have failed as the products worked their way down into the consumer market, but I still have more than a passing interest in the production of qtvr. We also use them at work occasionally. One of the impediments to production of qtvr’s is how time consuming the process is. You have to shoot multiple images and then stitch them together in specialized software, very little of which has been particularly easy to use. In response to this vendors produced lenses that can shot 180 and 360 degree panoramas, but they suffered from the barrel distortion wide angle lenses introduce, leading to very odd looking panoramas. The prices are also very high and the 360 degree solution is too bulky to be carried around on a regular basis.

Sony is trying to take the process another step forward with a new lense system that aims to be small , less susceptible to distortion, and inexpensive. I hope this leads other vendors produce cheaper higher quality lense systems. It’s unlikely I would buy a Sony camera to shoot VR’s, but I would definitely buy a lense for my canon that operated like the system Sony is producing.