360° photos
A capture covering the entire space around the camera position — 360 degrees horizontally, 180 vertically.
A 360° photo shows everything visible from one position: all around, and from top to bottom. It is usually stored as an equirectangular projection — a 2:1 image that looks like a distorted world map. Only the viewer in a browser, app or VR headset folds that surface back into a sphere.
Such captures come either from a 360° camera whose two or more lenses fire simultaneously, or from several individual frames assembled by stitching.
In practice, 360° photos are the basis for virtual tours, Street View publications and documentation. Resolution matters more than people expect: because the viewer only ever sees a section, a panorama 8,000 pixels wide leaves about 2,000 pixels for a 90-degree field of view, roughly the width of a Full HD image.