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QuickTime VR (virtual reality) is a type of movie supported by Apple's QuickTime file format. It allows the creation and viewing of photographically captured panoramas and the exploration of objects through images taken at multiple viewing angles. It functions as a plugin for the standalone QuickTime Player, as well as working as a plugin for the QuickTime Web browser plugin.

Since 1998 Apple Computer has abandoned updates to QuickTime Authoring Studio. Quicktime will still render QuickTime VR panoramas and object movies but the ability to create movies has been left to third party companies.

QuickTime VR (QTVR) Panoramas

VR Panoramas are panoramic images which surround the viewer with an environment (inside, looking out), yielding a sense of place. They can be "stitched" together from several normal photographs, or captured with specialized panoramic cameras, or rendered from 3D-modelled scenes. There are two type of VR Panorama:

• Single row panoramas, with a single horizontal row of photographs.
• multi-row panoramas, with several rows of photographs taken at different tilt angles.

VR Panoramas are further divided into those that include the top and bottom, called cubic or spherical panoramas, those that do not are usually called cylindrical.

A single panorama, or node is captured from a single point in space. Several nodes and object movies can be linked together to allow a viewer to move from one location to another. Such multinode QuickTime VR movies are called scenes.

Apple's QuickTime VR file format has two representations for panoramic nodes:

• cylindrical (consisting of one 360° image wrapped around the viewer)
• cubic (consisting of a cube of six 90°x 90° images surrounding the viewer).

Each of these are typically subdivided or tiled into several smaller images, and stored in a special kind of QuickTime movie file, which requires the Quicktime VR plugin.

Hot spots can be embedded into the panorama, which when selected can invoke some action, for example moving to another panarama node.

QuickTime VR (QTVR) Objects

In contrast to Panoramas, which are captured from one location looking out at various angles, objects are capured from many locations pointing in toward the same central object.

The simplest type of Object VRs to capture are single row, typically captured around the equator of an object. This is normally facilitated by a rotating turntable. The object is placed on the turntable, and photographed at equal angular increments (usually 10°) from a camera mounted on a tripod.

Capturing a multi-row object movie requires a more elaborate setup for capturing images, because the camera must be tilted above and below the equator of the object at several tilt angles.

The image source does not have to be photographic, 3D renderings or drawings can be used.