Panorama Viewer - 3 Megapixels (mesh) Version 1.00

Are you tired of being limited to no more than one megapixel images in SL? The maximum resolution of a texture in SL is only 1024 x 1024, or one whole megapixel! Whether it is a stretched image or a square image, the best you can get out of a single texture is one megapixel. Of course, what that means is that those images are going to be grainy and/or blurry when stretched out for a wide panorama - and, that is especially unfortunate when the image started out as breathtaking and high resolution.

But, that is pretty much what you will find when looking around for panoramas on the Marketplace - single texture images that are no more than 1-megapixel, and many of them are only half that at 1024 x 512! Well, that was just not enough, for me. And, I suspect it is not enough for most people. So, I decided to create the Stratotech 3-Megapixel Panorama Viewer!

How did I get around that pesky 1-megapixel limit? Easy - by creating 3-megapixel panoramas and splitting them into three pieces, each 1024 x 1024! I then wrote a script to display the names of the panoramas in a menu and apply the appropriate textures to the proper faces when the user selects a panorama.

Of course, a 3:1 panorama is generally going to be best viewed on a curved prim, like a cylinder. But, guess what? We only get one face on the inside of a cylinder and we need three to display a 3-megapixel panorama. So, the Stratotech 3-Megapixel Panorama Viewer has three faces to support your panoramas. Sure, you can use three pieces of a cylinder linked together to accomplish the same thing. But, what I discovered when doing that is that it is quite tedious to get the three separate textures to line up properly on three hollowed pieces of a cylinder. It can be done, but it is not easy. So, I've done that work for you and applied the proper texture repeats and offsets on the mesh prim faces before it was created - so, they are exactly what they should be. All you need to do is apply your three textures to the faces with no need to modify texture repeats and offsets.

This panorama viewer is ideal for sky box applications or anywhere you would like to display a 3:1 wide panorama at high resolution. It is resizable up to 64 meters!

The panorama viewer script is written and commented to be very clear and easy to understand what needs to be done to load your panoramas and incorporate the viewer prim in with your builds. You need only find the panoramas you like and split them up and upload them into Second Life! The script can support panorama names up to 24 characters and can hold over 60 3-megapixel panoramas!

You may include this panorama viewer and the accompanying script in your for resale builds. But, you must restrict the permissions on both the viewer object and the panorama viewer script. The panorama viewer script permissions must be set to No Modify and either No Copy or No Transfer. And, the viewer object permissions must be set to either No Copy or No Transfer. You may not resell the panorama viewer prim with full permissions or as is.