Sutro Tower 50th Anniversary Virtual Tour
The problem
Sutro Tower is closed to the public. For a 50th anniversary, there was no way to let anyone see the landmark they look at every day.
The approach
Treat the tower as a survey target, not a photo subject — gigapixel, LIDAR and photogrammetry combined so the result could be explored rather than just viewed.
What was built
46 gigapixels across roughly 1,300 source images, captured from 1,811 feet on Roundshot VR Drive heads, reconstructed in 3D with Stimulant.
The outcome
Live at explore.sutrotower.com. Covered by ABC7/KGO, SFist, Mission Local, Radio World, TV Tech and Hacker News; Roundshot's own press release names the team.
For Sutro Tower’s 50th anniversary, Gavin led the gigapixel, LIDAR, and photogrammetric capture
that became explore.sutrotower.com — a full 3D reconstruction of the 1,811-foot San Francisco
landmark, built with Stimulant. The tower is normally inaccessible to the public; the project
brought it to a browser.
Roundshot’s own 13 March 2025 press release names the team directly: Gavin D. Farrell, Michael Franz, and Julio Perez, working with the Roundshot VR Drive capture system — independent, third-party confirmation of the team behind the work. Coverage followed from ABC7/KGO, SFist, Mission Local, Radio World, TV Tech, and Hacker News.
The capture totals 46 gigapixels across roughly 1,300 source images — the tower’s scale rendered down to a browser-explorable model, the kind of project that only exists because someone was willing to climb 1,811 feet with a camera rig and figure out how to stitch what came back.
Gigapixel Photography — Gavin Farrell, Michael Franz, Julio Perez. Gigapixel Post-production — Gavin Farrell.