I recently stumbled upon a production company that creates panoramic views and virtual tours. A happy departure from the 360-degree tours of stainless steel condos and stained hotel rooms I typically find on the web, these guys are using fisheye lenses and rotating cameras to capture more aesthetically pleasing angles and images. New York City is particularly well represented with skyline views from the rooftop of Hotel Penn, Grand Central Station and Hoboken Pier — to name a few on offer.

The natural world is, of course, not to be forgotten, so feel free to take a deep breath and stare out into the abyss from atop Colorado’s Flagstaff Mountain.

What makes virtual panorama like these so appealing, I think, is not the quality of the imagery itself (or, even worse, the prospect of it supplanting physical experience), but rather the user’s ability to control it. Frenetically panning back and forth, from Grand Central Station’s floor to the Celestial Zodiac on its ceiling, is endlessly entertaining — and a lot easier on the neck.