What is a 360° Virtual Tour?
You know when you hold up that expensive smartphone, hit the pano setting, then spin yourself in a circle and twist yourself up into a corkscrew pretzel to get the whole view around you?
You are actually taking multiple shots which are then magically “stitched” together inside the phone to form one long, narrow image that shows the scene around you in 360°… or at least the circumference of how far you can twist yourself around.
The end results are fun, interactive, and informative. You can zoom in to look at specific things and drag the image to look at different points around you. You also get more of a sense of being “in” the image than you would with a still image or even a video.
I thought I knew what a virtual tour was?!
Many think a virtual tour is a collection of photos strung together and “run” like a screen show. The user can hit “play” or click through the static images but nothing more. No zooming in, no seeing what’s over there in the corner, no investigating every nook and cranny of what’s in the image.
Other’s call a video a virtual tour but the viewer is at the mercy of the person shooting the video with little control over what they want to look at. A video provides a little more to see but you find yourself looking at the screen and saying, “go back” or “freeze that” in order to get a better look.
So again… what is a virtual tour?
Technically speaking (here comes the jargon):
A 360 Virtual Tour is a collection of 360-degree panoramic rotating images, “stitched” together to form a full, 360° view of a location. Special cameras, lenses, technology, and methods are used to bring a tour together into a visual experience for the viewer.
A virtual tour package consists of several high-resolution photographs, called “spins”, brought together in a complete tour package. This high-quality user experience shows multiple locations throughout a site, switching views via thumbnails. The user has full control over what they want to look at and can zoom in or out to enhance the scene they’re viewing.
In addition, descriptive text, hotspots that transport the viewer from one place to another or simply provides more information, videos, and sound can also be included in a virtual tour package.
Panospin Premium Virtual Tours are hosted on the client’s servers and can be embedded on a website with some simple coding.
How are 360° Virtual Tours being used today and why should I have one?
A virtual tour is a marketing tool that can help bring new customers and clients to your business. It’s also a “virtual reality” view of your business relayed in visual images that allow the viewer to be “right there” at your location. It’s the best way to accurately show what your location really looks like. A tour is also a convenient sales tool that can be used to illustrate your business in a way still photography cannot.