Today we are adding support for uploading panoramas to Mapillary. With the advance of 360 degree (action) cameras and smartphone cameras widely supporting panoramas, this is a natural step for us.

Uploading panoramas works in the web uploader as well as with upload scripts*. Group them into sequences, just like you would do with regular photos.

Any panorama conforming to the Photo Sphere XMP Metadata standard will work. In addition to those, we are also supporting iOS camera panoramas and some other apps. See below for some examples of what works.

Supported:

• Apple iOS panoramas from the camera app
• Android Photo Spheres from the camera app
• 360 cameras, like the Ricoh Theta, that save photos in the Photo Sphere format (assuming they have GPS)
• Many popular panorama apps like Sphere, and DMD Panorama.

Not supported:

• Google PhotoSphere iOS app. They remove the GPS locations when saving the photos. (If you can add back the GPS in Exif it will work)

Viewing panoramas

Panoramas are viewed in the same interface as regular photos, the difference is that now you can pan around by dragging the photo**. To show that you are looking at a panorama, the aspect ratio of the viewer changes to a wider view.

A panorama in the viewer. The same navigation contols as for regular photos are there.

Here's an example sequence of panoramas taken with the regular iOS camera.

Stitching panoramas

Starting today, we are also stitching Mapillary photos into panoramas. Our viewer already gives you a dynamically generated panorama if you zoom out from a photo with lots of overlap but many asked for a high res stitched photo compilation. Sequences taken in panorama mode, are now stitched and you can switch between the regular photo view and panorama view.

Zooming out on a photo generates our dynamic panorama. Here you can apply filters and the panorama changes accordingly. Clicking the panorama button changes the view to the stitched version.

The stitched panorama is one large image. Click 'Exit Panorama' to go back to the regular view.

Hope you will enjoy these new features (many of you requested panorama support). Let us know what you think and report any issues you find.

/Jan Erik

*) The web uploader does not work directly from iOS devices due to the image picker stripping photos of the GPS data. **) Works best on browsers that support WebGL. In Safari you can turn that on under the Develop menu.