Editing QuickTime VR (section)

==History==
QuickTime VR was conceived in 1991 by programmers Eric Chen and Ian Small of the Human Interface Group in the Advanced Technology Group at Apple, utilizing a [[Cray]] supercomputer to process images into panoramas. It was soon made prominent within the company by Apple's board member and former astronaut [[Sally Ride]], who was fascinated by the demonstrated possibilities of 3D computer imagery.<ref name="The inside">{{cite web | title=The inside story of Apple's forgotten project to change how we explore the world from our computers | first=Kif | last=Leswing | date=May 29, 2016 | work=Business Insider | url=https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-of-apples-forgotten-virtual-reality-project-quicktime-vr-2016-5 | access-date=September 22, 2018 | quote=Years before Google and Oculus started daydreaming about virtual reality, Apple already had a “VR” product on the market. Apple called it QuickTime Virtual Reality, or QuickTime VR.}}</ref>

{{quote|text=The first way I did [[panoramic photography]] was a little bit of a cheat. So what you do is, you take a million pictures and you animate between them. I did all this with a single camera, because imagining the matrix of cameras we now use was just too expensive. It was extremely onerous, the stitching and all of that. It was quite a lot of work. The head-mounted VR did exist at that time. So it was a poor man's VR. Calling it VR was controversial and somewhat presumptuous.|source=Dan O'Sullivan, early QuickTime VR engineer<ref name="The inside"/>}}

It was publicly launched in 1995 as part of [[QuickTime#QuickTime 2.x|QuickTime 2]], by a dedicated group including Chen, Small, senior content engineer Ted Casey, and program manager Eric Zarakov.<ref name="MacWorld July 1995"/>{{rp|99}} Apple sold the content authoring tools for {{US$|2000|1995|round=-2}} plus a $0.40-0.80 royalty fee per commercial CD-ROM disc depending on the number of QuickTime VR movies, or no royalty charge for non-commercial usage.<ref name="MacWorld July 1995"/>{{rp|100}} Upon launch, it was a supporting technology in digital publications such as the ''Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual''.<ref name="The inside"/><ref name="MacWorld July 1995"/>{{rp|100}} The first high-profile public application of QuickTime VR is the 1995 courtroom visualization of the crime scenes in the [[O. J. Simpson murder case]].<ref name=newmedia>{{cite journal | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19970713200708/http://www.newmedia.com/NewMedia/95/4/news/0495.QuickTimeVR.html | url=http://www.newmedia.com/NewMedia/95/4/news/0495.QuickTimeVR.html | title=QuickTime VR Gets Surrounded | journal=NewMedia | author=Elia, Eric | date=April 1995 | archive-date=July 13, 1997 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

The platform was deemphasized upon the [[Steve Jobs#Return to Apple|return of Steve Jobs to Apple]] in 1997.<ref name="The inside"/> The discontinuation of [[QuickTime#QuickTime 7.x | QuickTime 7]] in the late 2000s brought the end of development and support of QuickTime VR and other major technologies.