Irfan view is great - but stitching panoramics is not listed as a feature. I have done hundreds of pans over the past several years, and most all of them today use derivatives of Enroute software (no longer in business.) Adobe PSE 3.0 does it flawlessly, as does Jasc (Corel) Photoalbum 5. And, some of the software that comes with digicams does it as well.
Most good panoramics require at least a 25% overlap of pictures taken from the same spot. You can pan horizontally and vertically or a combo of both. That gets a bit iffy, however. Most pans are 3 to 4 shots. Enroute software did have a 360 capability. That is used a lot by real estate people. Looks like U-Lead has taken part of that niche:
ULead
When I shoot pan shots, I usually go from left to right from the same pivot point with a 50% overlap.
Here's a sample - College Fiord, Alaska. 5 shots, 50% overlap, stitched by Enroute in June 2002.
Pan
This thread really belongs in Software, but to give it a hardware flavor - to take good pans, you really should put the camera on a tripod and shoot all shots from the same exact pivot point using the 50% overlap rule. Each software package has its own limitations on number of shots that can be mosaic'd.
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