HowToView

When viewing the 360° panoramas you can:

click the full-screen button, or resize the browser window to your preferred view
pan and tilt the panorama using the cursor, in either drag or spin mode
or click the auto-rotate button
zoom in and out with the + and – buttons, or gestures, or a mouse-wheel
click the map button to display or hide a map of the current panoramas
click the thumbnails button to hide or show thumbnails
click the text button to hide or show the title, caption, location, and date of photography

Interface controls are located together in the lower left corner of the panorama image:

show / hide thumbnails
show / hide text
show / hide map
start / stop rotation
change cursor mode between drag and spin
go to fullscreen mode / cancel fullscreen mode
zoom in / zoom out

I have designed this site to be viewed as a series of slide shows.
You can proceed methodically through the images in geographic order.

on the Home page select a State page, such as Alaska
on the State page select a Region of interest, such as Northern and Interior Alaska
then choose a Locality, such as Chicken
view the 360° panorama (as detailed above)
click the next 360 button (right arrow) to continue the slideshow, or click a thumbnail image
you can also go backwards using the previous 360 button (left arrow)
note the checkmarks that appear on thumbnails of panoramas you have viewed
when you have seen all the 360's in a Locality click the next locality button (double right arrow)
when you have seen all the Localities in the Region click the go to next region button (slanting up arrow)
or click website home (house icon) to see all states

Navigation controls are located together in the lower right corner of the panorama image.

previous panorama
next panorama
next locality
go to next region
go to Home page

Hierarchy

The top level in the geographic hierarchy is State (also Provinces and Territories). There are currently 33 States (counting California as three). All States are linked from the Home page. Every State page has links to the Previous and Next states, in geographic order.

Within States are Regions. Some Regions are geographically small, such as The City of San Francisco, others are very large, such as Northern and Central Nevada. There are over one hundred Regions. Each Region page has links to Previous and Next regions, in geographic order, as well as a link to the parent State page.

Regions contain lists of Locality pages. Locality pages present geographic clusters of 360 panoramas, there are about 2900 of them. Click the thumbnails or use the Previous 360 and Next 360 buttons. There is also a link to the parent Region page.

The 360° panoramas themselves, the main content of the website, are only viewable in the context of the Locality pages, not standalone. There are about 15,000 panoramas.

Each of the 360° panoramas contains the following data:

TITLE – a short descriptive title of this 360° panorama
THUMB_TITLE – an even shorter title, appears on the thumbnails and map links
CAPTION – a description of the subject of the panorama
PLACE – a precise description of the location of the panorama
DATE – the date of photography

LAT and LONG – decimal latitude and longitude
ELEVATION - elevation above sea level in meters

LOCALITY – the 360panos Locality to which this panorama has been assigned
NEXT_LOCALITY – next Locality in the geographic click-order
OPEN_PAN – the direction the opening view is facing, relevant to the original image
OPEN_TILT – tilt up or down of the opening view
NORTH – azimuth of North relative to the original panoramic image