Panorama vs Photosphere: The Secret Metadata That Makes Photos Spin

Ever taken a photo that lets you tilt your phone and look around, while another app gives you a static strip? The difference comes down to four lines of hidden metadata. This episode breaks down the engineering separating a standard panorama from a photosphere — from multi-row capture grids to XMP tags that tell viewers to wrap your image around a virtual sphere. We cover why most phone cameras skip this feature, how partial spheres work, and what happens when you open the wrong file in the wrong viewer.