2022
I'm new to 360 degree photography. I'm using a Ricoh Theta SC to contribute photospheres to Google Street View.
I have many questions, but the most frustrating problem I've come across lately is the horizon discrepancy between what iPhone app shows when compared to the published version in Google Maps. The published version often have an annoying tilt for some reason.
Here's an example. In this photo, I was standing still, holding my hand up above my head, trying to hold the camera as level as possible.
It's not perfectly level, but it's close enough. However, once I publish this photosphere via the Street View app, this is what I see on Google Maps.
This happens on a regular basis, and I can't figure out what went wrong. I realize that the Theta has gyroscopes that some would like to disable in certain situations (e.g. when shooting a video inside a racing car with plenty of G-forces), but I was standing still for a photo in this case. More importantly, everything looks fine in the app itself. It's only when it's published does it become tilted for some reason.
Can someone help me figure out what's going on here?
I also noticed that more often than not, the compass heading in my pictures are quite wrong, so I usually have to fix it manually through the iPhone app. Could this be the culprit somehow? Is it possible to get the correct compass heading in the first place?
