Virtual tour history

1994 - QuickTake 100
Apple launches the first consumer digital camera, the QuickTake 100, offering a resolution of 640x480 pixels, which was already amazing for the time and paved the way for Virtual Reality (VR).
1995 - QuickTime VR
Apple releases the wonderful QuickTime VR or QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality), which allowed users to create 360° virtual images into which they could implement a nagigation through "hot spots." Apple publicised its release by distributing a CD-ROM containing an extraordinary virtual tour of Apple Expo 95 at the CNIT in La Défense in Paris. On receiving a copy of this CD-ROM, Alain Filhol started thinking about the possibility of producing a virtual tour of the ILL, but at the time the necessary hardware, software and expertise were not yet available.
1997 - First demo
A former Apple employee, Brieuc Ségalen (aka Briq), offers to create a demo of this new technology for the ILL. The demo, produced by his colleague Francis Gorgé, was very simple and included around ten cylindrical panoramas photographed using a QuickTake 100. The images were stitched together using MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop), and QTVR's "authoring studio" tools were used to create the navigation interface. The viewing window was tiny (448x240 pixels), yet it was truly magical. Perhaps a little too innovative for the time, as the Directors took a long time to decide to finally go ahead with the project!
2002 - First virtual tour of the ILL
This was produced for the ILL by Francis Gorgé using QuickTime VR and distributed on CD-ROM. The tour included around 20 panoramas photographed by Briq using a KODAX 265 camera with a resolution of 768x1152, then a Nikon Coolpix 995 equipped with a fisheye lens to limit the number of photos to be taken to just four. Unfortunately, the result after stitching was very disappointing due to the low resolution of the initial images.
2005 - From cylindrical to spherical 360° panoramas
In the face of this disappointment, Francis Gorgé suggests that Briq contact Laurent Thion (Ecliptique), a professional photographer who had begun shooting spherical panoramas back in 1999 and already had a solid reputation in this field. The project then moves from low-resolution cylindrical 360° panoramas to much better quality spherical 360° panoramas, albeit at the cost of having to perform some rather unorthodox acrobatics in order to reach the shooting points we needed in the ILL's complex technological environment.
2006 - Web version
The first web version of the virtual tour is available. For both Mac OS and Windows, it requires Apple's QuickTime 7 plug-in.
2009 - Flash version
As Apple had in the meantime cowardly abandoned its QuickTime VR, Francis Gorgé chooses Pano2VR to redevelop everything in Flash. The ILL virtual tour is then given a new interface similar to the current one.
2007-2015 - Shooting improvements
This period sees improvements in terms of image quality (dynamic range, resolution) and equipment. For example, thanks to the use of a 6-metre telescopic boom, some shots became much less acrobatic but were nonetheless long and tedious to set up.
2016 - HTML5 version
Pano2VR, and consequently the virtual tour of the ILL, abandon Flash technology in favour of the HTML5 standard.
2018 - Motorised boom
Laurent Thion and Yannick Raoul implement remote control of the camera's tilt at the end of the camera boom using specially developed proprietary software. Computer control is initially wired, then later via a radio frequency, making panorama capture faster and safer. It should be noted that, in the ILL environment, it is impossible to use a drone instead of a camera boom.
2025 - Current status
The virtual tour now includes more than 60 high-resolution panoramas, although their resolution has been deliberately limited in order to restrict the level of observable detail. In 30 years, the resolution of the initial photos has increased from 640x480 pixels to 7360x4912, the panoramas increased from 2592 × 564 pixels to 18848x9424 and the price (adjusted for inflation) for 10 panoramas inserted into the interface has increased from €7,000 to €10,000. 2025 is also the year we are taking our first steps towards creating a version compatible with VR headsets (virtual reality headsets) thanks to the Pano2VR and VR Tourviewer software.