This is a small alternative to the panorama plugin (both circular and cubic).
Instead of moving the mouse for the 360 view, which has no animation to the frames (such as the water fx), you could just use the slide arcross transition effect. Depending on how you make your images/frames can make it more effective.
Mayabin's use of the transition effect is not what I'm reffering to, it's pretty different.
Here's a broad example of what I mean is up for download (Powered by AMTransformer):
http://members.cox.net/time-killer-games/START.zip
Just an idea
TKG