I've been an architectural photographer for decades. The 4 by 5 Sinar being the workhorse. Just got involved with Stitcher last summer and put together some 360's for fun. I have them up and running on the photo web site.  http://maylone.com/360vr.htm
 
Take a look, comments are welcome! As an artist that makes money, criticism is often constructive.
 
Note some of the cool widgets, including return to horizon. The actual files sizes could use work, but other than that, it seems to operate smoothly.
 
Thanks in advance,
Steve[/url]

Link removed. No longer producing VR's. I do use Stitcher for flat renderings. These ARE a commercialy viable product.

Why don't you offer virtual tours anymore?  Anything specific that might be helpful to someone looking at starting in the industry?

Radicalstudios, the answer in short... I've been succesful with architectural photos for 10 years now. The two months, each year, that I get of "slow time" are used to create marketing plans, overhaul the web site and play around with various techniques in photoshop.  
 
The time required to become a 360 wizard, does not justify my time. Especially when money calls elsewhere. The actual making of a VR is easy and fun. Making it friendly to the internet is painful. My biggest complaints of 360VR, would be the adaptability of QuickTime to web sites (install player, push here click there) the average person browsing simply will not do it. I also got frusutrated when QT7 was released with many bugs and quirks. We keep waiting for the movies to become widely used, it never happens.  
 
Having said that, they are very cool and still fascinate me. There is still a 360 displayed on a hidden link at my site. http://maylone.com/portfoliofull/bwc.htm
 
If you are looking to start in the industry, I would suggest specializing in 360's and perhaps complimenting your business with web site design and production. They seem to go hand in hand.

Hi Steve,
 
Thank you for your insight, and the sneak peak of your 360 tour.  
 
I currently run a studio in Ohio which builds intranets and we've done some 1 - shot virtual tours in the past.  They're easy and quick as long as you've got the tripod level, but the quality is much lower than what you can get with stitching.  
 
I should have a few samples up soon, i'll post them up in here so you can take a look.  
 
Do you find that your slow time in January and February?  Thats when things have slowed down for us over the last 5 years in web dev...every year like clockwork.  The appeal of 360's is that it's something that my wife and I can do together, which makes the financial return only a part of the equation for us.  Certainly tho, if we're able to get solid results both financially as well as otherwise that would make it that much more appealing.  
 
We've spent the weekend with our first real set of photo tests, and I have a question for you.   Do you find that you have to bracket your exposures up and down for interior shots (to accomodate things like windows and darker spots) and if so, do you let Stitcher handle the masking or use a third party tool like the miranda DRI plugins?  We had to make heavy use of the external apps with the one shot photos since it couldn't adjust from quadrant to quadrant.  
 
Have a great week, thanks for any insight you might have.
 
George

Absolutely, January and February! You hit it on the button. March and April start with a trickle and then it's off to the races for May, all the way through the end of December. 10 to 16 hour days are the norm. I've been in business since 1988, and the "clockwork" that you speak of, has held true for the last 5 years. In the late 80's and early 90's, I worked with ad agencies. The seasons were unpredictable.
 
My example of the VR is weak, as we are still waiting for a cash register to arrive for the long countertop. When it arrives, I'll paste in my darker exposures for the highlight areas and place the cash register on the counter top. When I go to the finished version, it will have exposures from 4 seconds to a quarter second, both at F/11. All 36 "views" are pulled into Photoshop and guides placed. After pulling in the next set of 36 (highlights) the file will be 2GB or better. After it looks good, I save each section as a jpeg and stitch. I suspect this is a slight overkill for most practical uses.
 
My older Nikon D1 is heavy and poses a real problem when leveling the tripod, even with the Kaiden head. When I upgrade, my adventures into VR should be more fun. Right now I'm shooting my money shots (the stills) with a Phase One ($ gulp) and spend good amounts of time in Photoshop getting the highlights and shadows to read nicely (samples on my site). I don't mind, provided the end result is good. After hours (years) of testing techniques and methods, I've resorted to the lasso at 200 or 300 percent to select the highlights. Or, create a dummy layer with greater contrast to narrow the selected color range. This, combined with overlay blending, applying an image mask and occasional merge to HDR, work well. The problem with most, are the artifacts that are visible at higher resolutions. When taking a little of each technique, you can not see the fake stuff. I would be interested in looking at some of your software for other methods.
 
With a team effort (you and wife) I think you'll have more fun. And hopefully better success. I checked out your web site, it looks like you have the right idea by combining the VR with web site development.

Link is not working???