

One World Trade Center: The Top of America - thomasreggi
http://wtc.gigapan.com/wtc/

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spodek
I live in the West Village. I zoomed in all the way to my building. I zoomed
in more, saw myself zooming in on myself.

Strange loop.

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JTxt
Reminds me: The days before 9/11 I played with some webcams that let you pan
and zoom a cam and take turns if others were using it. There was one on the
Empire State because I used it that day... There may have been one on a wtc
tower, and I may have tried it too... Already down? Can't remember that well.
Anyone else remember that? Or that type of webcam? Later on they got better,
but have not looked into them any while. (I'll need to look into it.)

~~~
MarkTee
I remember using those when I was just a kid! I'm pretty sure that there was
some sort of search term or operator that I used to find them through Google.

I used to have a huge list bookmarked, and they weren't just on famous
landmarks. It was actually kind of creepy because some were located in
offices, small businesses,etc.

One time a friend and I constantly rotated one of the office cameras until a
guy got up from his desk and covered the lens with a piece of paper. I'm
guessing that the owners didn't realize that they were accessible by _anyone_
with an Internet connection...

~~~
raamdev
I recall doing the same as a kid (and as a young adult). The one I remember
searching for were the Axis network cameras:

inurl:/view.shtml [1]

and

intitle:”Live View / – AXIS” | inurl:view/view.shtml^ [2]

[1]
[http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:/view.shtml](http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:/view.shtml)

[2]
[http://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3A%22Live+View+%2F+-+...](http://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3A%22Live+View+%2F+-+AXIS%22+%7C+inurl%3Aview%2Fview.shtml%5E)

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Zaheer
Beautiful. I'd be curious how this shot was taken. Typically if you look to
the top/bottom you can see the connection point where the camera was resting
but I can't seem to find it in this pic.

~~~
andrewliebchen
[http://time.com/10672/making-the-world-trade-center-
panorama...](http://time.com/10672/making-the-world-trade-center-panorama/)

~~~
freehunter
Although I would recommend watching the entire thing, the relevant bit is
around 5:30.

Spoilers:

For anyone who doesn't want to watch the video (or cannot watch the video),
they took all of the pictures they could with the camera mounted in one
direction, then turned the camera rig upside down to finish taking the
pictures. Since the rigging was now in a different location, the boom could be
removed from the final product.

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lakerz16
These are always really awesome. But for the love of god, invert the controls.
Or maybe a button to switch between methods

~~~
pacaro
indeed. And what's with the gimbal lock? Quaternions FTW.

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tricolon
I found the MacBook (Pro?) that must have been connected to the camera with an
ethernet cable:
[http://i.imgur.com/t1HYAIE.png](http://i.imgur.com/t1HYAIE.png)

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tantalor
Here's the library they use for panorama rendering:
[http://krpano.com/](http://krpano.com/)

More demos:
[http://krpano.com/html5multires/](http://krpano.com/html5multires/)

Apparently uses CSS3D and WebGL.

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o0-0o
Look up at the tower, and zoom in on the Moon. Incredible!

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
Hmm.... There appears to be a water-mark box around the moon. Wonder if it was
inserted as an Easter egg.

~~~
antsar
<tinfoil>The camera didn't capture the moon (out of shot, poor lighting,
whatever), and they edited that in.</tinfoil>

Or maybe they just wanted to tweak it with a filter to make the moon more
visible, but applied the filter to a rectangular area.

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NPC82
I want to believe this is either a plane or a satellite.

[http://bit.ly/1ffbpQH](http://bit.ly/1ffbpQH)

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griffendoor
[http://wtc.gigapan.com/wtc/?xml=wtc.xml&view.hlookat=-189.12...](http://wtc.gigapan.com/wtc/?xml=wtc.xml&view.hlookat=-189.12&view.vlookat=47.53&view.fov=2.39#panorama)

=

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/)

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frik
What's inside the top of the antenna-spire?

In the documentation video I saw some strobe lights:
[http://time.com/10672/making-the-world-trade-center-
panorama...](http://time.com/10672/making-the-world-trade-center-panorama/)

And a MacBook notebook, as someone pointed out. But what else is behind the
glass?

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griffendoor
[http://wtc.gigapan.com/wtc/?xml=wtc.xml&view.hlookat=3.86&vi...](http://wtc.gigapan.com/wtc/?xml=wtc.xml&view.hlookat=3.86&view.vlookat=39.74&view.fov=2.39#panorama)

What is up with the glass boxes there? Staircase? Elevator?

~~~
freehunter
I don't see any access to the closest rooftop in that picture, so I would
guess that it's a glass box covering a stairwell. I'm not familiar with the
architecture of New York buildings though, so it's merely a guess.

~~~
gales
Believe you're correct, as there appears to be a faint outline/shadow for a
handrail as well, at an angle that would be used for stairs

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skyebook
I wish they'd make something like this that captured time lapse imagery... The
construction going on in Brooklyn Bridge Park looks roughly like where they
were at last summer. Would love to see the summer turn into this winter we've
been experiencing.

Really awesome stuff :)

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amirmansour
This is awesome. You can zoom in pretty deep.

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hakunin
I was able to zoom in and find my apartment building all the way down at Coney
Island.

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lukejduncan
Would be really cool with a Google Map data overlay

