QuickTime VR

It was soon made prominent within the company by Apple's board member and former astronaut Sally Ride, who was fascinated by the demonstrated possibilities of 3D computer imagery.

Calling it VR was controversial and somewhat presumptuous.It was publicly launched in 1995 as part of QuickTime 2, by a dedicated group including Chen, Small, senior content engineer Ted Casey, and program manager Eric Zarakov.

They can be stitched together from several normal photographs or 2 images taken with a circular fisheye lens, or captured with specialized panoramic cameras, or rendered from 3D-modeled scenes.

The magazine's exhaustive overview concluded with this: "QuickTime VR is an impressive achievement that reinforces Apple's role as the innovator in personal computer multimedia.

But Apple's zeal to turn QuickTime VR into a profit center may slow its initial adoption and perhaps even relegate it to the backseat of Microsoft's limousine.

As this issue went to press, Apple was reconsidering its requirement that developers pay royalties on titles that incorporate QuickTime VR.

"[3]: 108 In 2016, Business Insider reflected on the long-term impact of QuickTime VR: "It's difficult not to read about Apple's experiments with panoramic images and not draw a connection to the recent rise of 360-degree videos on platforms like Facebook and YouTube — or even the immersive aspects of services like Google Maps Street View.