A normal cylindrical Quicktime VR is a way of seamlessly looking around 360 degrees from a given point and is derived from still pictures and not video. This keeps the resolution high and the file sizes small. You can also zoom in and out.
The images themselves can be produced by a variety of techniques and shot almost anywhere and can be used to illustrate pretty much anything - NASA even have one of the surface of Mars!!
We favour Quicktime as the delivery format for our work and it's the latest incarnations - versions 5 and 6 - which are the most interesting for the web user as they enable the viewing of Cubic VR's with the ability to look straight up and straight down!
Quicktime 6 also incorporates some clever streaming and compression technologies that enable high quality images at modest file sizes and interactive content - this includes the new mp4 codec.
