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| SALES SITE - FAQ |
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| What is a virtual tour? |
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| A virtual tour is a series of digital images that are stitched together to make a complete 360° panoramic image. This image is then displayed through a viewer window. The final virtual tour slowly pans the entire 360° of the image, creating an immersive effect that makes the viewer feel like they are actually in each location! At any time, viewers can take control of their experience by clicking on an image and dragging it left or right. VRWAY’s virtual tours allow viewers to zoom in and out and come complete in three formats - Fullscreen QTVR (recommended for those with a high-speed connection), QTVR medium (recommended for those with a dial-up connection) and Java (recommended for those with QuickTime). |
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| What is "panoramic VR?" |
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| Panoramic VR refers to an image on a computer screen that moves as the user moves their mouse to show a realistic view of the area originally photographed. This view is usually 360° around and a variable amount up and down. |
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| What is "QuickTime VR" (QTVR)? |
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| QuickTime VR images are produced by seamlessly 'stitching' a series of images together. Users do require the QuickTime plug-in to view the images but it is a free and easy download available from Apple Computer that works on both Windows PCs and Macintosh computers. These images 'stream' to the computer and are visible within a few seconds. QTVR offers the highest quality viewing experience. |
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| What is a 'JAVA VR'? |
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| As with QTVRs, JAVA VR images are produced by 'stitching' a series of images together seamlessly. The advantage of JAVA panoramas is that the user doesn’t need to install any additional software or plug-ins. The disadvantage is that JAVA panoramas tend to be lower quality than QTVRs and the user doesn’t see any of the pano until the whole file has been downloaded. For this reason, JAVA images are smaller in file size and ideal for dialup users. |
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| What’s the difference between a virtual tour, panorama and QTVR? |
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| Essentially nothing. A panorama is a 360° image. A virtual tour is a collection of two or more panoramas. QTVR is a panorama that utilizes Apple’s QuickTime VR technology to view the panorama |
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| Why should virtual tours be used? |
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| A recent study by Pew Internet shows that 45% of adult Internet users visited virtual tours of vacation locations, online. |
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| How should virtual tours be used? |
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| Virtual tours should always be used to support text content about a subject. For example, if a travel website recommends a particular hotel or tourist attraction, virtual tours are powerful tools to further inform and educate customers. Visual content such as virtual tours are an effective way to engage viewers, build their purchasing confidence, and establish customer loyalty. |
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| How is VRWAY VR panorama produced? |
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| VRWAY produces 360 x 360 cubic VRs, the highest standard in the industry. (Other providers may offer cylindrical panos than pan 360 x 90 degrees, or even 180 x 90.) This means that viewers can pan both horizontally and vertically a complete 360 degrees. A cubic panorama is like a box, composed of six images, one for each of the four sides and one each for the top and bottom. The production process - which involves touching up any problems or inconsistencies within each image (such as exposure, lens flares, removing artifacts, etc.), stitching the six images together and removing all trace of the stitching process - renders the panorama into a sphere-like image. At this point the file size is too big for speedy commercial use, so it is compressed to a point where the file size is manageable for quick download without giving up image quality. Upon viewing, most first-time users are flabbergasted as to how this was achieved. |
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| What is the average file size of a fullscreen panorama? |
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| Our panoramas are extremely high quality and fill the entire screen; to achieve this high level of resolution, file size is around 1.5MB. Our experience has shown us that smaller file sizes result in lower image quality, leading to less than adequate results. |
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| How long does the panorama take to load? |
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| VRWAY panoramas take only a few seconds to download over a broadband connection and our feedback indicates that viewers find them worth this small wait time. Dialup users can download the smaller file size Java version in several seconds. |
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| What technology is used to serve VRWAY's virtual tours? |
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| Industry standards QuickTime, Java and Apache web server. |
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| What services are included with a VRWAY Virtual Tour? |
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| VRWAY hosts the tour on its servers, so you don’t need to worry about managing traffic and providing content quickly. We also take care of archiving, online distribution and content maintenance. |
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| Do the tours incorporate maps? |
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| VRWAY will soon be implementing Google maps in all its tours. |
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