A virtual tour is a form of interactive photography that allows a user to explore a location digitally, usually on a website or app.
The first virtual tour was designed by British engineer Colin Johnson and was first publicly experienced by Queen Elizabeth II. In 1994 she unveiled a 1550 rendering of Dudley Castle at the Dudley Castle Visitor Center in the North of England. Since then they have rapidly infiltrated the leisure, property and tourism industries and are now taking the digital world by storm by supporting classic photography with interactive experiences.
Many earlier examples were produced in video form and simply consisted of a cameraman walking through a location. With the introduction of new technologies, the interactive landscape has come to replace more linear experiences in which a space is filmed using still images before being put together using computer software. This 360° panorama or ‘scene’ is then stitched together with other scenes to form a tour. Walkthroughs allow the user to dictate the scene and perspective, usually by clicking and dragging on the photo itself. Navigation techniques between scenes vary from tour to tour, but generally take the form of thumbnails or “hotspot” links on the tours themselves.
A scene can be created by joining any type of image, as long as they are taken from the same perspective; however, using a standard sized lens would mean that a user would have to take more than 40 images to accurately cover a 360 by 180 angle. To combat this, professionals use a variety of wide-angle lenses to reduce the number of images that need to be stitched together. These can range from a standard wide angle lens to custom built 8mm fisheye and single shot 360 degree lenses.
Because of their ability to express a space with much greater precision than traditional photography, virtual tours quickly became standard in the high-end residential and commercial property industries. From there, they quickly spread to leisure, tourism, and education, and now most establishments looking to showcase their facilities to potential customers invest in a virtual tour as a standard part of their marketing budget.
Today, virtual tours are used for a variety of different reasons, from business to purely entertainment. Now you can explore the new Aston Martin from inside the car, see a moving panorama of London from the London Eye and even explore the red surface of Mars from the comfort of your desk.
