New Virtual Tours Posted at Whitcomb House

Whitcomb House, an assisted living community in Milford, MA, posted a tour window of our virtual tours on their site yesterday. Check it out.

International VR Photography Association

I would love everyone to check out International VR Photography Association. It's a wonderful site that serves as a great community for VR photographers. There's a lot of great virtual tours, still panoramic and a nice array of forums.

You can check out IWP360's member's page. You see a bunch of our work there.

Finally, check out Cheatham Lane's Blog on the IVRPA site. He's a great photography out in California.

States simplify college search via Web

I found this article at MSNBC.com the other day and found it some what intresting. It's about how many high school students use the Internet to get a feel of presptive colleges. Many use... you gussed it, virtual tours.

Here's part of the story, a link to the entire thing can be found at the end.
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Officials trying to make application process, enrollment easier

By Dorie Turner, The Associated Press

TLANTA - With her first child headed for college this fall and two more soon to follow, Carol Wright was lost.

Campus tours, applications, financial aid forms, transcripts, SAT scores, class planning — and that was just the beginning.

"It's unbelievable," the Carrollton, Ga., mother said. "You don't know where to start or what to do. It's trial and error, at the mercy of everybody telling me what to do."

Then she heard about Georgia's year-old Web site, gacollege411.org — a one-stop shop for applying to the state's colleges and requesting financial aid. Modeled after a similar site in North Carolina, Georgia's has already registered more than 100,000 students and families in just 18 months.

Georgia is now among about 35 states with such sites, an effort by education officials to make college more accessible by demystifying the daunting application process while making it easier for students to enroll in schools within their borders.

The $1.5 million site includes free prep classes for the SAT college-entrance exam, a class planner for students entering high school, applications to more than 100 colleges, virtual campus tours and information on getting one of the state's full-ride, lottery-funded scholarships.

Most states' sites have information on every college in the state — both public and private — and what kind of programs are offered.

But they do have private-sector competition, such as princetonreview.com.

Rob Franek, publisher of Princeton Review, said his company's site has many of the same features but takes a national perspective. It also includes annual rankings based on student surveys about quality-of-life issues.

"We're unapologetic listeners to student opinion," Franek said.

But some state sites offer advantages unavailable elsewhere, including the ability to electronically apply for state-sponsored scholarships. For the individual states, the sites also help standardize admissions technologies and directly support efforts to bolster access to college.

Full Story

Boston Skyline

Here's a panoramic of the Boston Skyline at night. We took this a while back for some of our promotional material. We're pretty happy with it. Take it for a spin. You'll need Quicktime to view it.

Click and drag to navigate

You can see more virtual tours at our home page, IWP360 - A Virtual Tour Provider

Virtual tours of the Moon

Here is a cool link to some virtual tours of the moon. Very neat and you really get a feel of what it would be like on the moon, well sort of. You can really use virtual tours for so many different applications.

Click for the moon

To Go or Not To Go for Virtual Tours?

Since the onset of web we have seen some web properties doing well sans all those graphics, whereas other are relying solely on graphical extravaganza, whether still graphics or animations. So it becomes necessary for you to decide "Do You Really Need some Virtual Tour (360° Tour) add-ons for your site".

Think for a moment, if yours is a directory or a portal solely meant for information sharing and your forte lies more in database maintenance then you should not turn to virtual tours. Some of the biggest portals in web are without any virtual tour elements. Take the case of www.ibiblio.org

This site owns thousands of text books and audio books for free and maintains its popularity for the sake of its resources. Pure, plain texts, no frames - as simple as it is.

But when yours is a purely business site (portal), a virtual tour might add commercial value to a great extent. Remember, here you need to add a 3D virtual tour not just as a novelty item to add glare. You take calculative measures to give a virtual makeover. You start doing things moneywise. Making sense?

A hotel, restaurant, super mall or purely scientific instructional site need not just virtual tours but many tiny 3D animations to make things clears. Here, I would like to discuss an incident the day before. I was looking for resource material on "The Brain Factor in Anxiety and Depression". I got quite a few good sites but they did not quench my thirst until I hit a site - a rich store of 3D illustrations. And now I can well teach someone what is the underlying thing in depression.

Coming to the topic, in real estates, hotels and restaurants the first impression lasts. A glossy virtual presence matters, because for the simple reason "when you go on a trip to San Francisco you would better book a room in the hotel you visited yesterday on your laptop". I am sure you will never make a hunt of hotels while in transit.

In real estate business - all that glitters is gold! The larger and clearer images, and brighter colors will set you apart from the others.

Planning a Virtual Hotel/Restaurant Tour?

Technically anything online is virtual and visiting those it virtual tour. But in trade terms virtual tour (360° tour or 3D tour) is a panoramic view that displays a realtime look.

There are several things that helps you plan a virtual tour for your restaurant, hotel or real estate business. First of them is, of course, your budget. Then you must consider your customers. Finally "which way to show" and "what to hide".

1. You can create the most simple type of 3D tour by combining a series of pictures. Use captions explain each picture. The benefits of making panorama of a pile of pictures is that it is easily downloadable and plain. Also it is cost effective.

2. The second is you can prepare 3D virtual tour from a video footage. The process involves making a shockwave animation with less aspect ratio and streaming properties. But the hurdle here can be professional look, amateur video shoot or unprofessional optimization. Together they can ruin the work. It is cheaper.

3. The third is fully interactive, programmed 3D virtual tour, with various nodes, mapped for easy walkthrough. This is costly but pays in long run. It takes the visitor to the driver seat for a complete experience. The visitor can look around, have access of the surroundings, turn to directions, peep through the location, zoom in and out. And draw a conclusion from his/her experience.

Flaunting and Covering the Scenes in a Virtual Tour

Ever seen the 3D virtual hotel tour of a star hotel? Analyzed the content? What was worthwhile and what was junk?

Well, if the hotel is sandwiched in the heart of the city you would better show the hotel interiors and illuminate the profits staying at the centrestage of a busy city that never sleeps. Otherwise you would better show the scenic surroundings of the hotel and tranquil atmosphere of a day out into this great hotel.

Either way it is good where a lot depends how well you understand to put your thoughts into 3D. Story telling in virtual hotel/restaurant tour is never easy.

The virtual tour helps visitors an easy access to your actual site (hotel, restaurant or mall). They will feel being at the right place because they have virtually visited. They can even go a long way to demonstrate your accessibility and openness.

Kathy John is an expert in topics useful info on virtual tours like restaurant hotels etc. Tips on how to choose a 360° tours.

iPix prepares for liquidation

The founding company for virtual tours, iPix, is going under. Here's an article from KnoxNews.
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Ipix Corp. is up and running again on a "very limited" basis as a bankruptcy court prepares to liquidate the company, and former CEO Clara Conti is back in the fold as a $5,700-a-week consultant.

Ipix customers can have their online tours hosted and purchase licenses to renew their 360-degree imaging software from Ipix's online store, but no customer service or other operations are in place, said Stephen Karbelk, the sales agent appointed to auction Ipix's estate.


Conti and John Farmer, Ipix's former chief technology officer, have been hired as independent contractors to assist court-appointed trustee Donald King.

According to a court filing, Conti's role will be to assess the company's assets, advise King on how to sell them, identify prospective buyers, assist with due diligence and provide information on Ipix's business operations and transactions.

Farmer will play a similar role with the company's technical side and will be paid $120 an hour.

Ipix, an imaging company founded in Oak Ridge in 1986, grew in the 1990s on the strength of its online "virtual tours," going public in 1999 at the height of the technology boom. When the market crashed, Ipix was hit hard and attempted to shift its focus to the video surveillance market.

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Click here for the rest of the story

Apple Store Fifth Avenue, Virtual Tour

A very cool interactive map and virtual tour of the new Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York. Check it out.

Virtual Tour - the Big Catch in Competition

I found this interesting article I thought everyone should check out.
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Virtual Tour - the Big Catch in Competition
By: Kathy John

You know a picture tells a thousand words. Add to this line - a virtual tour (3D tour) tells it all! Plainly speaking words never speak better than a virtual tour. As internet has become the mainstay in media, 3D tours, the new kid on the block, is breaking the clutter of web graphics. High-end virtual tours takes the visibility of a business levels up.

Have it, flaunt it! Virtual tours authenticate a companies/organizations worth. It presents the big picture interactively making way for easy decisions. Virtual tours prove to be complete makeover for sagging web presence of a company into hospitality.

Virtual Tours - the Big Picture

Virtual tour (3D tour) is but the all-round view of a venue, location, machinery or system, composed of a varying degree of images. It can also accompany texts and audio so as to make the walkthrough interesting.

360 degree virtual tours are highly advantageous for real estate industries. Prospective clients browsing these tours get rid of the pain of physically inspecting the places and systems. As an educational aid, they are unparallel.

Besides, 3D tour is used more or less in product advertisements.

Virtual Tours - the Technology

Bluntly saying, this is a visual media. Technicians optimize a series of photographs or a video panaroma to the web standards. Panographers can add hotspots to allow the users click-and-enter various mappings of the tour.

Compatibility and compression are the major issues in creating 3D tours for web. Because one is exposed to the world at a click. A slow rendering graphics is worse enough to ward off the busy traffic.

Broadly, virtually tours can be divided into: * Fixed format (do-yourself) virtual tours: One can create virtual tours by using software. All one needs is but to enter some images, texts and sounds (if required) to the program and choose the options of panning, size and time parameters. If the budget is pinching this can be well-to-do for small enterprises. * Professional (full-service) virtual tours: Professional photographers, illustrators and programmers together can build a virtual tour as you specify. This can be expensive but one get the dream-results. One can also add/remove certa
in features as required. It is suitable for corporates.

Virtual Tours - the Benefits

* Over 50% of online viewers prefer to visit a real location after having viewed its virtual tour. * It stimulates the buying decision of potential clients. * Increases traffic and increases the recall-value in prospective clients. * Increases retail businesses looking to show off their showrooms.

About the Author

Kathy John is an expert in topics of useful info on virtual tours like restaurant hotels etc & tips on how to choose a 360° tours.