Creating Virtual Tours
What is a Virtual Tour? It is something that provides a viewer with an imerrsive presentation of a place a product, a prospective purchase, a vacation spot or a home for sale. StillMotion products provide all the tools you need to create compelling virtual tours that let a viewer explore and interact with what you are presenting.
Elements of a Virtual Tour
The elements / requirements of virtual tours consist of combinations of the following elements. These are all easily accomplished with StillMotion Products.
- Basic Tour (Slide show)
- Titles and labels
- Pan and Zoom
- User controls and navigation
- Hot spots for interaction
- User feedback, and contract
The most basic virtual tour is a sequence of images that show the viewer the aspects of what they are interested in, a visual tour of the place or item.
Basic Tour
A simple and effective virtual tour, which is used by thousands of realtors everyday, is a simple slide show of a home for sale.
A simple tour will show an exterior view followed by digital photos of the major rooms. This is can be done with one click in any StillMotion product. Of course you have to get your tour in front of the perspective buyer so choices of sharing become important.
All StillMotion product let you publish to the web, create CDs or DVDs for distribution, self playing shows for kiosk displays and large screen presentation and even template based publish to YouTube.
Add Titles and Labels
Adding titles, labels and captions is easy and adds to the interest in a virtual tour. Text can be placed anywhere on a page, have a backgounds and animation effects and also be used as buttons to facilitate navigation.
Add Pan and Zoom
Many confuse virtual tours with pana and zoom effects. Pan and zoom is an essential element in creating a virtual toor it lts you gauide a viewer thhough the and around the object of the tour. StillMotion products provide a number of Pna and zoom options from simpl pans and zooms to complete ken Berns stykles "tours of an image".
Visit the demo pages (click here) and see this collection of virtual tours (click here) to show basic examples of virtual tours.
Add user control and navigation
Adding navigation provides the viewer with the ability to guide themselves at thier own pace and to spend as much time as the want on a particular aspect of the tour. Stillmotion provides a many navigaion options.
- VCR Controls: add Rewind (go to start), next slide, pause, Pevious slide and Go to end navigation buttons to a show ith a coupple of clicks. You may choose the selection of navigation tools you want, where they appear, thier style and size. VCR controls may be added by selecting a check box.
- Custom navigation controls (click here for a sample button display) and graphic, image, synbol or import SWf file may be easily converted to a button to create a custom contro. You can create your own library of custom controls to add a unique look to your tours.
- Visual navigation buttons are menus items that automaticsl take the image from a slide and create a navigation button back to it. Click here for a virtual your using navigation buttons. Click here for a tutorial on how navigation buttons are created.
Add hotspots
Hot spots are a specia kind of navigation control A hot spot is an active area in an image that if clciked on will casue an action sush as a jumping to another location. StillMotion products make it easy to add both visible and invisible hot spots to andy area of an image. A transparent text box or symbol is converted to a hot spot by adding and action and an action to it. Click here for a Hot Spot Demo
Add user feed back and contact
Addig user feed back and contact information closes the loop between you the presneter and your viewer. StillMotion let syu send e-mails to request futhereinformation, set up a meeting or pruchase. Information about what theviewer is clciking on ciscan be included in the message using Variables. Here are two virtual tours that caombne all the features described.
