All panoramas that you upload to your account are reviewed before being published on the 360Cities.net site.

If your panorama was not selected and you would like to know why not, you can obtain more information via 360Cities Forum or via email [email protected]. Please, include the url of your panorama in your message.

• JPEG or 8-bit TIFF format with no layers
• Only standard ASCII characters in the filename (examples of characters not allowed: ü, á, ě, etc.)
• Your panoramas must be 360º - the left side of your panorama must match with the right side of your panorama so the viewer can enjoy a fully immersive experience of looking all around without any visible seams
• The height of your panorama must be smaller than the width (vertical panoramas are not accepted)

Panoramas that don't meet the technical requirements will fail to upload.

You should always add appropriate, correctly spelled metadata to all panoramas you upload to 360Cities. Adding metadata improves your images’ search ranking, making it more likely that they will be found in a search engine query on Google, other search engines, and on 360cities.net.

The goal of providing metadata is to make it more likely that your images will be found by viewers and potential licensing customers performing searches. 360Cities licensing customers generally perform searches in English, so the primary language of your metadata should be English. Metadata that you add to your images and videos help licensing customers find what they are looking for.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE METADATA: Please use English when writing your titles, descriptions and tags with the exception of names of landmarks and other significant, well-known places that search engines will recognize. The easier your images and videos are to find, the more likely you are to earn royalties.

Find more info about setting proper Metadata for your panoramas here.

To upload a fully spherical panorama, make sure the aspect ratio of your panorama in pixel width and height is 2:1. Example sizes of panoramas that will be treated as spherical: 6000x3000, 10000x5000, 8422x4211.

We no longer require that the uploaded images have an aspect ratio of 2:1. To upload a non-spherical 360-degree panorama to 360Cities, simply upload it as any other panorama. We will detect everything automatically and show it using an appropriate projection. There are no special settings and limitations for these panoramas. Non-spherical panoramas with black holes or areas will never be selected for 360Cities so make sure you crop your images correctly if you want them to be selected.

Example sizes of panoramas that will be treated as cylindrical: 6000x2000, 6000x2999, 10000x2000.

Please upload only family-safe photos to 360Cities. No panoramas that you wouldn't show to your kids, or to your family. No nude panoramas, no panoramas of sex salons, no violent panoramas, weird, abusive, etc. If you are not sure, in the worst case you can send a link to your unpublished pano for review to our forum (administrators of 360Cities see even unpublished panos so we can tell you if it's ok). If we find that you break this rule, we'll immediately delete your panorama and may even suspend your account.

We are seeing an increase in demand for panoramas that don't represent the real world, thanks in part to the rise in VR. We encourage these types of panoramas as long as they are categorized as "Out of this world". Example of these types of panoramas are computer generated images, drawings, and images with special effects. "Out of this world" panoramas have a different behavior than the "real world" panoramas on 360cities.net.
Learn more about "Out of this world" panoramas.

Panoramas that fail to meet content requirements are removed from your account without warning.

This includes promotion on the map, in the search results, nearby panoramas and various other places:

• Enjoyable quality and appropriate content
• Width at least 6000 pixels (exceptions are sometimes granted for good quality panoramas that are smaller)
• Fully spherical panorama or cylindrical panorama without any black borders (make sure you crop your images enough if you have black areas on top and bottom)
• Logos, if used, should be small and placed at the nadir (bottom). No big logos or advertisements are allowed. Exceptions: a small logo can be placed on the zenith (top) or very exceptionally elsewhere in the image ONLY if placing it on the nadir would cover an important feature in the panorama.
• PLEASE NOTE: adding any graphics (name, logo, or other attribution) inside your images and videos dramatically DECREASES the chance that they will be selected for licensing by customers of 360Cities and our distribution partners. Please avoid doing this if possible.
• No holes or black areas in the sky or distorted or badly retouched sky (zenith)
• No huge hole in the nadir nor distorted bottom of the panorama (nadir) - Exceptions: Shadows, tripods, small holes and small mirror balls are ok
• No major stitching, color or exposure errors
• The panorama must be level. The horizon needs to be in the center of the image so it does not look curved or leaning one way or another unnaturally. One way to test this visually is to rotate the image while checking to be sure that vertical lines, like telephone poles or trees, remain vertical as you pan around.

If your panoramas are not selected for public promotion, you can still view them from your account and profile and you can share them without any limitations. More information.

Are you waiting too long for your panorama to be reviewed?
We usually review all panoramas within days. If you think always wait too long, you might want to upgrade to a paid account and get a higher priority in the review queue (the higher the account the higher the priority you will get). We guarantee the review for all paid account panoramas within 7 days but usually this happens within 1-2 days.

Only PRO and COMPANY account holders can publish panoramas promoting businesses.

If your panorama is flagged as promoting a business and you don't have a PRO account, the panorama will be unpublished.

The images you upload to 360Cities must have a minimum width of 6000 pixels to be selected for 360Cities and to be included in the 360Cities KMZ file for Google Earth. Exceptions are sometimes granted for good quality panoramas that are smaller. Panoramas smaller than this don't look good in fullscreen view. The images must NOT be enlarged because this reduces the quality of the image. With ALL dSLR cameras, it is possible to make a panorama that is 6000 pixels wide or larger. All of our panoramas load at the same speed - very fast! It doesn't matter if the original image is 6000 or 25000 pixels wide.

Tip: In case you're not already aware, we are using a multi-resolution tiling system to display the panos. This has two advantages. First, the pano will load much faster because it only needs to load the necessary tiles depending on the screensize and the part of the pano you're looking at first. Second, it allows you to zoom in to the original resolution of the panorama.

Images should be in JPEG or TIFF (8 bit) formats with no layers. TIFF files can have up to 65536 x 32768 resolution. We recommend that TIFF files be uploaded using FTP. JPEG files can have up to 30000 x 15000 resolution (which is the maximum size allowed by JPEG format). JPEG compression (quality) should be ideally 85-90% to ensure a good viewing experience.

My panoramas are in flash / cube strip / quicktime format. Can I upload these?
No, you can only upload your panoramas in flat equirectangular projection format.

My connection is not very good / I have a lot of images, can I use FTP to upload the images?
Yes, we allow all of our users to upload their panoramas via FTP. You can see the FTP login details on your account page. More information.

How do I upload a better version of my panorama?
You can replace your existing panorama with a new one and still keep all your existing metadata. Here's how.