LivePicture also offered an excellent panoramic stitcher called PhotoVista. Infinite Pictures, now called iMove, developed a technology called SmoothMove, which is now also called iMove. SmoothMove, unfortunately, received little attention. The first problem was that almost as soon as the product was announced, iMove was hit by a lawsuit from the bad boy of the photographic VR world, iPix. Meanwhile, Surround Video was purchased by Jutvision, and eventually merged with iPix.
Most producers use either a fish-eye lens or a wide angle lens.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both techniques. But another consideration is that with the fish-eye technique, there's a lot less image data being captured. If you want to create a spherical projection, your best choice is a fish-eye lens. In spherical projection, the image is mapped to an imaginary sphere, so the viewer can look up and see the sky. IPix has spent a lot of money on pro-motion and marketing deals with large businesses.