What means of publishing and viewing photo panoramas exist for those who do not resort to external hosting services?

Question

Java

Gigapan , 360 Cities , ViewAt - all these are global collections and hosting of photo panoramas for publication and viewing by everyone; even, perhaps, very good ones. Let's say Gigapan offers a flash demonstrator of multi-megapixel and even multi-gigapixel photos, which uploads an enlarged image only as needed (much like Google Maps or Google Earth uploads their detailed satellite photos)
But, perhaps, there are similar tools used by a photographer who wants to place photo panoramas on his own site instead of external hosting? Or (which is roughly the same thing) the media that businesses use: a museum, or an art gallery, or some kind of store that wants to put a photo-panoramic display of their product on the Internet?
What are these funds? How is the viewer organized on the site, how is the photo material organized for viewing and uploading as needed? Are there open, free, or at least free, ready-made solutions?
I don't have a good answer to these questions. I will briefly describe what I have found; perhaps the Habrahabr community will fill in the gaps in my research.
First, apparently the ViewAt site is out: judging by their tutorial, the Flash Panorama Player viewer is used there , the price of which is ≈40 €, and the initial data for it are prepared as six faces of a cubic projection. It must be, and pumped up all entirely. How else.
Secondly, there is such a 360 Panorama Lite (≈$50). It seems that the author of his site used some special substances, because the page that begins in good health ("... without the need for plugins") continues to the rest ("... are looking for a java panorama viewer ..."; and Java - it's a plugin, and quite a weighty one at that, so its launch rarely takes less than a few seconds).
Thirdly, there is FirmTools Panorama Composer ( ≈30 $ ), which supports the QuickTime VR format. This format, as far as I understood it, is generally quite popular among programs that create photo panoramas (take at least PTGui ); however, this format involves the creation of a single .MOV file, which will be loaded from the Web in its entirety. Throwing any multi-megapixel panorama there (for example, 20000 × 5000 pixels) would mean asking for trouble for those viewers who have neither the patience nor an unlimited multi-megabit Internet communication channel. It is no secret that many providers offer legal entities or mobile users such tariffs that cannot be called cheap, high-speed, or unlimited. In favor of QTVR, we can only say that this format does not require the viewer to first download the file and then watch it; anyway, Pano2VR( ≈60€ ) supports "subtiling for progressive download".
A number of panorama players are mentioned in the links section of the PTGui website. First - the aforementioned Pano2VR, followed by the even above-mentioned Flash Panorama Player, then - krpano, PanoSalado and PTViewer, which we have not yet considered. The panorama player krpano
( 90 € + ≈300 € for those who want to remove its name on their site, which is displayed in the lower right corner of the player rather blasphemous) has the ability to upload images as needed , including with gradually increasing resolution; and there is an example. In general, it contains all the functions that a good panorama player needs, but it is not cheap.
The PanoSalado site talks about how competitors are constantly trying to hack it, so this beautiful open-source panorama player has been moved to the IVRPA repository wiki . Having seen this wiki, I did not find any documentation or descriptions of the program on it, but only hyperlinks for downloadingthe player itself and two additional tools for it (one for converting a spherical equirectangular projection into a development of a cube, and the other for cutting this cube into tiles). Judging by the documentation that is downloaded in the archive along with the program, its source code is intended for compilation into SWF, which is done by means of Adobe flash movie development. In this way, it resembles PAN ³⁶ O ^o RAMA from the visicam Tools kit, which also needs to be compiled in Flash CS3 or another similar tool.
PTViewer is written not in Flash, but in Java, so you probably won't be able to quickly load the plugin. This photo panorama player, fortunately, supports cutting panoramas into pieces, but only in one resolution (so the only merit would be to start downloading from those elements that are in front of the viewer, with a gradual transition to those that are "behind" the viewer).
If you google, a couple more free tools are found: FreePV (a browser plugin capable of playing cylindrical and cubic panoramas) and pan0 is a flash engine based on Papervision3D , whose parameter is a single JPEG (equidistant projection of a sphere).
There is also a links section on the IVRPA website mentioned above. There, for example, the panorama player PURE Player is found, marked in the list of links as free. It's free, but it only accepts files in the IVP format created by PURE STARTER TOOLKIT ( ≈35 $ ).
In the same list, SPi-V is found (an engine based on Shockwave 3D , not to be confused with Flash), which can load photo panoramas, understanding several projections (equidistant, cylindrical, cubic). Otherwise, it is no better than the aforementioned pan0, perhaps.
Does anyone know of anything else that would be better or cheaper (or even cheaper) than the above? Recommend then, do not be shy, please.

Answer 1

Nice review, thanks! Some progress in panoramas over the past 5 years has not made much progress. I used FPP on my website (by the way, it works not only with a cube, but also with QTVR mov, as well as with cylinders and sweeps, besides, it first loads panorama at minimum resolution so that the user can quickly see if he will wait for hi res to load).

Such a moment in engines as "the whole panorama is pumped out" I would not attribute to unequivocal minuses, since the panorama should be immersive, but if a small rotation shows unclear silhouettes and causes new downloads, then this only annoys (for example, as it is done in Google street view).

But the availability of panoramas on devices, on the contrary, I would single out as a separate item. Unfortunately, even the most expensive commercial engines support mobile panoramas very poorly. However, this is understandable, because. Apple cut off Flash on devices and never included WebGL support. Therefore, if mobile video is more or less settled in HTML5, then with the publication of panoramas, everything is bad so far, there is no suitable solution for combining high quality, ease of use and large coverage of devices.

Answer 2

Here is the answer to all questions (or almost all) https://mirpalasov.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/i...