SILLY: Tourism at Home -- VR Photography

I love to travel. But today I was shown something so unbelievable, so very LIKE the experience of "being there", that I wondered whether or not the internet was really bringing us together, or affording us the opportunity to travel without really ever leaving our seats. So, while I am referencing all of you to this website, I would like to just say that I hope you all go see the real things someday, too.

It's called Virtual Reality [VR] Photography (also known as "Immersive Photography"), and is described as an interactive panoramic image that can be viewed on your computer screen. You can actually pan around the entire image --360 degrees -- looking up at the sky, down at the ground, straight out into the faces of the frozen people, and it is absolutely WILD.

Of course, I'm probably the last one to find out about this. But here's one of my favorites, of a snowboarding competition being held in Taipei. (You will need Quicktime to view these images). Be sure to look at some of the other tourist and photojournalistic "Virtual Reality" photos.

If a picture's worth a thousand words, how many do you reckon we could get out of these?