Explore 360 degree Virtual Tours of South Africa

What exactly is a 720 degree photo? Well, the short answer is that there is no such thing!

360 degree photos are made of (usually) about 6 photos taken with a very wide angle fisheye lens, then stitched together to form one 360x180 degree image (this is known as an equirectangular image). If you think of the world map when printed on a flat surface (everything looks stretched out), that is an equirectangular image (and is 360x180 degrees).

Why 360x180 degrees, and not 360x360 degrees?
Horizontally you can move 360 degrees around (i.e. a full circle), but vertically you can only move 180 degrees (directly up, and directly down) before you start to see parts of the picture you have already seen. If you move more than 180 degrees up, you would then turn upside down, but be viewing the same part of the image as if you moved around 360 degrees.  (sounds a bit confusing, sorry).

Put simply, if you had to unwrap the whole 360 photo, you would get a flat image that is 360x180 degrees, but projected onto a flat surface (same as the map of the earth on a flat surface is 360 x 180 degrees).

As this is a 3D space / object, it is not possible to simply add horizontal degrees + vertical degrees, and come up with a number of total degrees (i.e. 360+360 = 720) as the degrees are on different axis.  As explained above, even if you wanted to somehow add these, it would need to be 360 + 180 degrees.

These type of 360 degree photos are not new, and have been around since 1995. I remember seeing them at school, when using Encyclopedia Britanica (which had very low quality 360 photos by todays standards).

360 South Africa has been creating 360 photos and Virtual Tours of South Africa since 2008, and we have now visited over 400 locations all over SA.  There are now also a number of other 360 photographers all over SA, mostly hobbyists, who are also creating wonderful 360 photos, and we are very glad to see how the interest in 360 photos is taking off around the world, and right here in South Africa!

Glossary of Terms:

"360 degree photo" - a photo that shows a complete 360 degree x 180 degree field of view.

"720 degree photo" - does not exist, and never will, as a complete rotation only has 360 degrees. A complete sphere only has 360 degrees x 180 degrees (look at map of the earth)

"gigapixel photo" - a photo made up of at least 1 billion (1 000 000 000) pixels. Created by taking hundreds of photos and stitching them together. (it is also possible to make a gigapixel 360 photo, as per London 80 gigapixel above)

"360cities.net" - the youtube of 360 photos, contains tens of thousands of 360 photos all over the world (wonderful for virtual travel, travel planning, etc).  Currently there is only 1 Pro Photographer member of 360cities.net based in SA, and that is me ;)  (full profile on 360cities.net here: http://www.360cities.net/profile/johngore )