Brad Templeton's Panoramic Photography
High Resolution Stitched Panoramic Photos
Recommended: Use Full Screen button when viewing
Giant Burning Man Panoramas

Giant Burning Man Panoramas

VR Tour


conclave.jpg (4393 x 1100 - 489K) or VR/Zoom!(Guess) Full size is 10072 x 2522 (25 Megapix) (4' 8" x 14" at 180PPI)
Fire Conclave dances around the Man, from boomlift

Over 15 years at Burning Man, I shot special super high resolution 360 degree panoramas of the city from high towers as well as scenes on the playa. Many of you will have seen them displayed in Esplanade art installations from 1999 to 20113.

In the header box at the top of this screen, the bottom line offers links to the main panorama pages.

Burning Man Panoramas: 98-99 2000 '01 '02 '03 '04 '05 '06 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '13 16-19 Sampler Giant-BRC

There are three ways to view them online in full resolution:

Best: a 4K monitor/TV or other large display

In your web browser, ideally on the biggest, high-res monitor you can. If you ahve a 4K TV, consider connecting your computer or TV to it if you can, it's worth it over HD.

Just go to any panorama, and click the "Fullscreen" button, then wander around with your arrow keys and scroll wheel, or mouse. Controls on the lower left will let you go next/previous.

VR Goggles

If you have VR goggles, particularly Oculus Quest, some of the shots look good in VR and wrap around. In your Quest browser, go to 4brc.com and the first link on that page takes you to the main gallery page.

There (or on any other panorama) click the VR glasses icon. Head to the "Burn VR" gallery for a set of different tours of the VR-suitable panoramas. Read the VR Viewer Help page to learn about how to navigate in VR and use the hand controls.

It details how in the VR, if you stare at something for a while, you will start zooming in on it like you have binoculars. This lets you see all the detail but can get disconcerting. If you have an Oculus controller, the button on your left controller can manually cycle the zoom levels intead.

Not as exciting - Tablet in tracking mode

On a tablet (or a phone) you can visit the pages in a browser, with pinch zoom and the usual methods of navigating a photo. You can also click the Compass icon in the lower left. It only shows up on handheld devices and is small - you may need to zoom in outside the picture area to click on it.

This puts your device in "compass" mode. It will pan around the shot as you move the device around you. So you can pretend like you are standing on a tower in Black Rock City looking through a window you can move around. You can also pinch and pull to zoom as you normally would, because most of these have tons of resolution.

This is a cute trick, but mostly I prefer a regular screen if you have it. These shots are all about resolution and detail, and the more the better.

Controls when in the browser

I strongly recommend clicking the fullscreen button, and then wandering the panorama with your mouse or arrow keys and scroll wheel. Right-Click will also produce a menu with some help, an ability to "zoom way out" and see the pano all at once, but there is also a control bar on the bottom left.
These two controls let you go to the previous or next panorama in your current tour.
Mainly for use in VR, these bring up VR galleries of all the tours and other galleries. Meant for VR, you may not even see all of them in the view, you need to pan left or right.
This zooms out to the super wide view where you see the whole panorama at once. Due to a bug, sometimes it is not centered and you need to move to find it.
This symbol only appears on phones and tablets. It puts you in a mode where as you move your screen around you wander around the image as a poor-person's VR.
This puts you in VR mode. Best with VR glasses and does a VR simulator in the browser which is not too exciting, but can work on Google Cardboard.
+ -Zoom in and out, but the scroll wheel, or "A" and "Z" are better.

On the Right-click menu you can also selet Compass mode, wide view and toggle how mouse drag works. Normally it drags the image. Reverse it and the image moves the opposite direction to how you drag, which some people like. You drag the direction you want your viewpoint to go.