As noted previously, the old way of viewing gigapixel imagery is no more. But there is a new, better way. The GIGAmacro company has a better viewing platform that can be used either with images uploaded to their server or with pre-existing images that currently “live” at GigaPan.com.
Here’s an example: a roadcut of limestone of the Grudaidh Formation (Durness Group) in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland, near Ardvreck Castle, showing several vogesite sills (igneous intrusions parallel to bedding) and faults that cut through the beds and the sills:
Note that there is a dynamic scale bar in the lower right. Watch it change as you zoom in. I calibrated this scale on the 1-cm scale markers on the side of the mechanical pencil that I have used in this image as a sense of scale (see if you can find it!). You’ll also note that the annotations are dynamic: the thickness of the lines (tracing the sill contacts in yellow, the fault trace in red) stays constant over various levels of zoom, and you can turn them on and off with the control panel at the right. Use the measurement tool to measure the thickness of the beds, or the offset on the fault. You can even rotate the whole gigapixel image with the rotate button at lower right – restore the layers to their original horizontal orientation; and read off the apparent dip from the slider bar.
Isn’t this cool? Yes! The correct answer is this is very cool indeed.
I like the Measure feature, too!
The red and yellow annotation lines (tracing the sill and fault contact) are not showing up for me, however.
Interesting! I polled folks on twitter, and about 3/5 could see the lines: