What's New in QuickTime 5

QuickTime VR Controls

When QuickTime Player displays a QuickTime VR movie, it provides users with a set of controls to manipulate VR objects and panoramas. A VR panorama lets the user stand in a virtual reality space, such as the church cathedral illustrated in Figure 7 , and explore immersively the dimensions of a full 360° panorama -- panning across, as well as zooming in and out of the panorama.

In QuickTime 5, authors can create VR panoramas in which users also have the ability to tilt up and down a full 180°, so that you can see the ceiling of the cathedral as well as the floor in Figure 7 . The actual horizontal and vertical range is determined by the panorama itself. To look left, right, up and down, you drag with the mouse across the panorama.

Figure 7 QuickTime VR on Mac OS X, with various controls to view and manipulate QTVR panoramas

In addition to navigating a QuickTime VR movie by holding the mouse button down and dragging inside the panorama, the user can manipulate the panorama by clicking various buttons:

A go-back button. This allows the user to return to the previous node (a single viewpoint in a panorama). Clicking this button restores the previous static pan angle, tilt angle, and field of view. The button is enabled only for multinode (multiple viewpoint) panoramas.
A zoom-out button. This allows the user to zoom out. Holding down the mouse button while the cursor is over this control causes the field of view of the displayed node to increase, thereby making the object or panorama appear to move away from the viewer.
A zoom-in button. This allows the user to zoom in. Holding down the mouse button while the cursor is over this control causes the field of view of the displayed node to decrease, thereby making the object or panorama appear to move toward the viewer.
A hot spot display button. This allows the user to highlight the visible hot spots. A single click toggles hot spots on; another click toggles hot spots off. This is a change in behavior from previous hotspot buttons, which displayed hotspots only while the mouse button was held down.

In addition to these buttons, there is also a label display area (not shown in Figure 7 ) in which helpful information can be displayed. For instance, when the cursor is over one of the buttons, the button's name appears in the label display area. Similarly, when the cursor is over a hot spot, the hot spot's name (if it has one) appears in the label display area.

What's New in QuickTime 5