The next best thing to being there

Many of the files are not only panoramic, but spherical captures - allowing viewers to look up and down as well as along the horizontal plane. Depending on the location, this can be a significant aid in the goal of immersing the viewer in the scenery. For example, in a rather cramped position on Athens' Acropolis Propylaia, the viewer can see not only the typical cityscape and clusters of tourists, but also scaffolding and restoration work taking place almost directly overhead. Similarly, the various cathedral tours just wouldn't be the same without a chance to inspect the architecture and decoration of the ceilings.

There are only 15 European destinations - and Hawaii - online to date, but with multiple files for each destination, you can pretty much waste as much time here as your heart desires. And if you tire of wandering the streets, the Special Projects collection offers more than 20 additional multi-file surveys of attractions ranging from the Colosseum and the home of da Vinci's "Last Supper," to the Matterhorn and the 2003 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships.

Collected over a period of years, the Special Projects files have differing levels of interactive options, but the most interactive and thoroughly produced presentations are to be found in this section. The virtual tour of the "Last Supper," for example, not only uses spherical panoramas (and the image of the work in situ certainly puts it into a new perspective), but also adds audio narration, a bit of suitably reverential background music, and stills that can be enlarged and viewed in exceptional detail. Navigation between Special Projects is a bit more complicated than the Destinations though, since the former are actually components of the latter. Due to this relationship, surfers will either have to move between Projects by loading their respective City pages, or return to Arounder's home page to make direct choices.

In early 2005, the creators of Arounder promised that the collection would grow by some 65 destinations before the end of the year. That didn't happen, but those projects may still be in the works, and could surface in the near future. In the meantime, there's still plenty to see in this collection, and though there are many other sites that will provide more links and better intelligence related to the destinations you'll find here, when it comes to simulating a stroll along the Nyhavn canal in Copenhagen, or checking out the view from The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Arounder shouldn't be missed - even if you plan to spend this year's vacation in the backyard.

Arounder can be found at http://www.arounder.com/.

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