Panoramic picture publishing and viewing

I have just discoverd 360cities while viewing google earth. I saw
these symbols on Google Earth a few years back but don't bother until
I start viewing Google street views of Singapore. I read in the news
about the controversies created by Google for taking these photos. I
didn't realise there are so many of them and pano viewers are good and
fast enough for low-end broadband.

Unfortunately Google Street only take panoramic pictures of streets,
not inside compounds and buildings. That is where amateurs and
professionals can contribute, until Google start providing pano
pictures tourist attractions all over the world, but I doubt it will
be able to meet the requirements of most people, just as photographs
of sites had not stopped tourists bringing in their own cameras of all
types.

360cities.net was launched in 2007 as shown by this post.
http://ivrpa.org/forum/public/1350

By 2010, its photographer has published on the net the largest
panoramic picture on Earth. Who says higher Megapixel cameras are not
required?
http://www.360cities.net/prague-18-gigapixels

High resolution cameras are not useful if you just want to print 3R
photos or watch on you PC or TV. Even Full HD TV and monitor can show
a 2Mpixel quality only. They are most useful for panoramic pictures.

There are many sites for published 360 degree panoramic pictures but
only 360cities.net are integrated with Google Earth. I though it was
Panoramio and actually published it there but it does not have a pano
viewer. In 2007 there are many more panoramio pictures in Google Earth
than 360cities pictures so I don't click 360cities that much, until I
started looking at Singapore streets for the intention of planning my
trip to Singapore, last week.

Without going to Singapore, I feel confident that I won't get lost in
Singapore. Mind you, I lived in Singapore for 3 years but that was
more than 20 years ago.

There are not many 360 degree panoramic pictures for Malaysia and
Singapore in 360 cites. For Malaysia I noticed that there are 2
prolific photographers but the number of pictures is only about 50. I
have uploaded more than 50 of my panoramic pictures in RC Flight Sim
resolution and full resolution but at the highest compression rate
because of problems uploading.

Publishing in 360cities

http://www.360cities.net/new_360cities_content_integrated_with_google_earth

I have just started but it could be the best way of publishing
panoramas.

I have successfully uploaded 8192x4096 pictures which I use for RC
Flight Simulators but highly compressed to 30% or less so that the
image size is less than 2Mbyte. Successfully uploaded but not yet
published. They have to view the picture to establish its copyright,
which is fair enough.

I tried to upload my pano stiched from 10Mpixel photos resulting in
more than 17,000 horizontal resolution but failed so far using my
512Kb/s connection.

360cities is capable of up to:
TIFF can be up to 65,536 x 32,768.

The maximum JPEG size is 30000 x 15000.

Uploading should be the problem. Viewing should not be much of a
problem because you view only portions at a time and streaming is also
done. That should explain why I was able to view many excellent
panoramas in 360cities.

Another way to view panoramas is through google "street view" but
these are just views from the street of famous cities. Unfortunately
my city, Kota Kinabalu, is not so famous so we must resort to
360cities to show it to the world.

Even in famous places such as Makansutra and Esplanade of Singapore
still do not have panoramic pictures widely available. I shall visit
Singapore this end of January and try to take panoramic pictures of
various places that do not have panoramic pictures in Singapore.