**Edit – 21/09/2023 – this tutorial was for the photsphere app on iOS which was replaced by the Google Street View App. The Google Street View App allowed anyone to upload their own Google tours pretty easily and even had the ability to connect to external single-shot 360 degree cameras such as the Ricoh Theta but as of March 2023 it appears as though even the official Google Street View app is fianlly being discontinued with no real alternative taking it’s place:
After having a lot of fun using the new Photosphere app on iOS on the iPhone5 to shoot Google tours I’d like to up my game a little and improve the stitching quality of the virtual tours produced using this awesome photography app to take photospheres while out and about on the fly when visiting exotic places, urban exploring or whenever the mood takes me.
Here’s a video tutorial which uses some simple household items to improve the stitching by enabling you to fix the camera on a single spherical point using a tennis ball cut in two and appears to vastly improve the stitching.
Sadly, owning an Apple iPhone5s this method will be tricky to accomplish with the camera being located in the top left corner of the device and not in the middle like the video demonstrates. However, it’s a good source of inspiration which I’ll hopefully adapt to make my already pretty decent Google tours even better!
Happy hacking!