This evening, I added support for the SGI image format embedded inside QuickTime containers to my QuickDraw viewer. Turns out SGI images have a 512 byte headers which QuickTime strips, as the data is redundant with what is stored by QuickTime. So before rendering, the full SGI file needs to be reconstructed.
I have fond memories of QuickTime VR, especially endless hours virtually exploring the Starship Enterprise. It was a really elegant and well implemented technology.
During the development cycle for QuickTime 3.0, part of the engineering team was working on a more advanced version of QuickTime to be known as QuickTime interactive or QTi. Although similar in concept to the wired movies feature released as part of QuickTime 3.0, QuickTime interactive was much more ambitious. It allowed any QuickTime movie to be a fully interactive and programmable container for media. A special track type was added that contained an interpreter for a custom programming language based on 68000 assembly language. This supported a comprehensive user interaction model for mouse and keyboard event handling based in part on the AML language from the Apple Media Tool.
The QuickTime interactive movie was to have been the playback format for the next generation of HyperCard authoring tool. Both the QuickTime interactive and the HyperCard 3.0 projects were canceled in order to concentrate engineering resources on streaming support for QuickTime 4.0, and the projects were never released to the public.