18:05:2018 We are currently upgrading our panorama software to a modern HTML5/Flash viewer, this should be viewable on every PC and mobile device.
Unfortunately we have had to "dumb
down" some of the panorama interfaces to accommodate map navigation by phone
users using fat fingers on tiny screens,
our apologies to desktop PC users who were used to our older, more detailed,
interfaces. One necessity for phone users are MUCH larger navigation maps
which obscure a large part of the view, we have made these "shrinkable", just
click on the map to toggle the reduction. Note that navigation by the hotspots
on the map is still possible whilst shrunken.
As VR panoramas are now commonplace, instructions for use are no longer needed, so just swipe, drag, click and spin!
You may notice that when a
panorama first loads it is blurry and indistinct, this is because our modern
panorama files are 5-6Mb in size and they take
a while to load even on very fast broadband, so we load a small, fast-loading
version first, and this is replaced by the full resolution image as soon as it
has loaded.
Size Versus Quality
We started showing VR panoramas on this site in 1999, in those days internet
access was by dial up modem with a top speed of 56k, so we had to set a limit
on panorama image size to allow reasonably fast loading. We settled on 350Kb, as
monitor resolutions then rarely reached 1024x780 this size
worked well for many years. Now with screen resolutions topping 2000 pixels
these old panorama files will look very soft or blocky if viewed full screen or
zoomed in. These older panoramas are all scanned from film of various formats so
we do not intend to upres them as scanning is very time consuming.
We presently have archived film
and digital files for about five times as many sites as are currently up on this
website, panoramas and images for these new sites will be
of much greater quality than the older ones
The new panorama viewer software is the fifth we have used since the site began, as the new code includes HTML5 we hope that it will stay current for a long time.