NakedRobot

The "fisheye distortion effect that plagues 3D views like this" that you describe is nothing of the sort. You are talking about a very wide angle of view. These images have a limited FOV, and it's not possible to zoom out so much that you get such distortion.

Actually it is not fisheye distortion that you describe at all - it is a rectilinear projection, and it's this type of projection that looks bad in a wide FOV. A fisheye projection looks much more natural if you are looking at a view with 110º FOV.

These things are not "distortion" at all but merely different projections of a spherical image on a flat surface. There is no "correct" way.

You can right-click on this panorama to change projection and understand more what I'm talking about. http://www.360cities.net/image/a-busy-morning

It appears to be a DSLR, a fisheye lens, and a 360precision Atome panoramic tripod head.

I made some panoramas at a private boneyard in Tucson in 2009. Here are my favorites:

outside a fuselage/shed http://www.360cities.net/image/national-aircraft-inc-airplan...

Inside a half-scavenged cockpit http://www.360cities.net/image/national-aircraft-inc-airplan...

an army airplane http://www.360cities.net/image/national-aircraft-inc-airplan...

some bombs http://www.360cities.net/image/national-aircraft-inc-airplan...

Here is Bob (on the right, in the golf cart), who works there. Bob has half of a finger missing. There are a lot of sharp things there, you see. http://www.360cities.net/image/national-aircraft-inc-airplan...

More general scraps, and two fuselages http://www.360cities.net/image/national-aircraft-inc-airplan...

These were shot at one of the few commercial boneyards, these guys bought the retired airplanes from the base across the street, and sold the parts.

Bob informed us that these places have stopped buying 'new' airplanes from the air force base - because of 'security measures', junked airplanes now have to be cut into pieces no larger than about 12 inches square. This, as you can imagine, renders most parts of the airplane no longer very useful ;-)

The "real boneyard", across the street from this junkyard, you can see on our world map page: http://www.360cities.net/map#lat=32.16896&lng=-110.84235... The aerial/satellite map itself is really a feast for the eyes. By the way, there are some very threatening signs along the perimeter of this base forbidding photography, and I have heard of photographers getting confronted by fleets of military police cars. So the guy who got inside this place really was very lucky indeed.

There is an open-air airplane museum also nearby, which is a lot of fun. You can't go inside the airplanes, which is very disappointing. You can see lots of wonderful airplane panoramas from the Pima Air & Space Museum here: http://www.360cities.net/image/pima-air-museum-convair-b-36j... (scroll down below the panorama for 'nearby' images)

We are nearly there. Here I am a couple months ago in Vienna with my prototype 360º video camera http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianjameswood/6103733114/in/set-... If you want more info, contact me via 360cities.net please :)

The greatest limiting factor to this becoming mainstream is the availability of cameras. Also, bandwidth and video capability is an issue: I can't download OR view 4k video on my still very capable 3 year-old macbook for example.

Now, Johnyzee I think mistakenly called it "360-degree 3d" actually, 360-degree images are 2-d, they are simply projected onto a spherical surface. They dont' however have any 3d information. Stereoscopic (i.e. "anaglyph, what people call 3-d, like what Avatar was) 360 video is another matter, and i don't think anyone has ever built that.