Pangea Software today announced the release of a free web browser plug-in called PangeaVR which brings OpenGL acceleration to Quicktime VR movies. “Over the last several years ‘interactive panoramic photography’ (aka QTVR) has quietly been making huge leaps in realism. Today’s hi-end QTVR movies are truly mind-blowing compared with the tiny and limited QTVR movies of the late 1990’s… Unfortunately, the panoramic renderer in Quicktime still does its drawing in software, therefore, navigating a large full-screen panorama on a 23″ Cinema Display gets a little chunky. The PangeaVR plug-in solves this problem by rendering Quicktime VR panoramas with OpenGL to achieve liquid-smooth animation.”