CleVR is a free panoramic

photo sharing Image sharing, or photo sharing, is the publishing or transfer of digital photos online. Image sharing websites offer services such as uploading, hosting, managing and sharing of photos (publicly or privately). This function is provided through ...

site and photo stitching software. It allows panoramas to be embedded into other web pages using a

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid F ...

viewer. Panoramas can be displayed with

hotspots Hotspot, Hot Spot or Hot spot may refer to: Places * Hot Spot, Kentucky, a community in the United States Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Hot Spot (comics), a name for the DC Comics character Isaiah Crockett * Hot Spot (Tra ...

— areas in the scene that can be clicked to display other content or to navigate to another scene. This functionality is similar to that provided by Apple's

QuickTime VR QuickTime VR (also known as QTVR) is an image file format developed by Apple Inc. for QuickTime, and discontinued along with QuickTime 7. It allows the creation and viewing of VR photography, photographically captured panoramas, and the viewing ...

, but it allows images, text and

Flash Video Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content (e.g., TV shows, movies, etc.) over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There ...

(

FLV Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content (e.g., TV shows, movies, etc.) over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There ar ...

) video to be displayed within the panorama window.

History

CleVR was originally launched by Clementine in 2000 as a platform for managing

content. The name ''CleVR'' is a

contraction Contraction may refer to: Linguistics * Contraction (grammar), a shortened word * Poetic contraction, omission of letters for poetic reasons * Elision, omission of sounds ** Syncope (phonology), omission of sounds in a word * Synalepha, merged ...

of "Clementine Virtual Reality". At first, panoramas could not be posted by the public, so the site contained

virtual tours A virtual tour is a simulation of an existing location, usually composed of a sequence of videos, still images or 360-degree images. It may also use other multimedia elements such as sound effects, music, narration, text and floor map. It is dis ...

created by Clementine. In October 2006, the web site re-launched in

public beta A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

as a free site that allowed panoramas to be created by anyone. Much of the content from the previous CleVR site was imported to the new platform. The new site was a complete rewrite of the old code, and was no longer based on QuickTime VR. Instead it used a Flash viewer developed by Clementine to display the panoramas. The new site was officially launched in April 2007. On the current site, the photo stitcher and panorama viewer were developed using

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Fla ...

Flex Flex or FLEX may refer to: Computing * Flex (language), developed by Alan Kay * FLEX (operating system), a single-tasking operating system for the Motorola 6800 * FlexOS, an operating system developed by Digital Research * FLEX (protocol), a ...

and

AIR The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for ...

. The CleVR site is written in

PHP PHP is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementati ...

, and uses

PEAR Pears are fruits produced and consumed around the world, growing on a tree and harvested in the Northern Hemisphere in late summer into October. The pear tree and shrub are a species of genus ''Pyrus'' , in the family Rosaceae, bearing the p ...

and

ImageMagick ImageMagick, invoked from the command line as magick, is a free and open-source cross-platform software suite for displaying, creating, converting, modifying, and editing raster images. Created in 1987 by John Cristy, it can read and write ove ...

. Images are hosted using

Amazon S3 Amazon S3 or Amazon Simple Storage Service is a service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provides object storage through a web service interface. Amazon S3 uses the same scalable storage infrastructure that Amazon.com uses to run its ...

Photo stitcher

CleVR includes free

image stitching Image stitching or photo stitching is the process of combining multiple photographic images with overlapping fields of view to produce a segmented panorama or high-resolution image. Commonly performed through the use of computer software, most app ...

software integrated with the site. This is an

Adobe AIR Adobe AIR (also known as Adobe Integrated Runtime and is codenamed Apollo) is a cross-platform runtime system currently developed by Harman International, in collaboration with Adobe Inc., for building desktop applications and mobile applicat ...

application, created with

Adobe Flex Apache Flex, formerly Adobe Flex, is a software development kit (SDK) for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich web applications based on the Adobe Flash platform. Initially developed by Macromedia and then acquired by Adobe Sy ...

. A Java version is also available. The stitcher generates

cylindrical A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an in ...

panoramas, the only projection supported by the CleVR website and software. The stitcher has fewer features than other image stitching software, but is designed to be simple and easy to use. The CleVR photo stitching software can stitch most panoramas without user interaction, but also has support for setting manual control points. While the finished panoramas can be saved to the user's computer as a

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and im ...

file, in most cases they will be uploaded to the CleVR website from within the stitcher. Users can also use other stitching software to create panoramas and upload them to CleVR.

Panorama viewer

The most distinguishing feature of CleVR is the way it allows panoramas to be easily shared and posted on other sites. This is done in a manner similar to services such as

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most ...

, using a

-based viewer that can be embedded in a web page or viewed on the CleVR site. The viewer re-projects the

equirectangular The equirectangular projection (also called the equidistant cylindrical projection or la carte parallélogrammatique projection), and which includes the special case of the plate carrée projection (also called the geographic projection, lat/lon ...

panorama to an

orthographic projection Orthographic projection (also orthogonal projection and analemma) is a means of representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions. Orthographic projection is a form of parallel projection in which all the projection lines are orthogonal ...

so that the view appears more natural, without the curved lines otherwise typical for panoramic photographs. It also overlays the clickable hotspots for navigation and the display of text, images and video.

External links

Official Site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clevr Free photo stitching software Panorama photography Image-sharing websites Adobe Integrated Runtime platform software Mass media companies of England