1. A method of displaying a selected portion of a panoramic image onto a display, the method comprising: providing an environment map in the form of a plurality of pixel values representative of the panoramic image, wherein the environment map represents the panoramic image wrapped onto a hypothetical cylinders; mapping, to a projection buffer, a first portion of the pixel values representative of a selected first area of the panoramic image, wherein the first area of the panoramic image mapped onto the projection buffer represents a horizontal view of the image from a viewing position lying along a longitudinal axis of the cylinder and at a midpoint of the height of the cylinder, the projection buffer lying along a tangent of the cylinder and between the viewing position and the view plane; mapping, to a view plane, a second portion of the first portion of pixel values, representative of a desired area of the panoramic image to be viewed; and displaying the view plane on the display.