Best Virtual Tour Software

What is Virtual Tour Software?

Virtual tour software provides a visual representation of a specific location in a panoramic, 360-degree view. These views can be customized with branding, music, and interactive buttons for added immersion. A 360-degree camera, or even the panoramic photo feature on a mobile device, easily captures an entire room and does not require extensive training to use. Additionally, VR software makes image capturing easier and more intuitive. Once a virtual tour is created, it can be easily shared and uploaded. Virtual tours can be created with omnidirectional cameras or with image stitching.

Why Use Virtual Tour Software?

One of the most useful aspects of virtual tour software is the ability to visit a location without physically having to be there. This is a time-saving feature and allows more people to view a location of interest, due to the increased ease of access. Besides this undeniable perk, virtual tours provide other advantages:

Location Transparency — When viewers have a realistic view of a location, it gives an added sense of transparency. For viewers who don’t have the ability to visit a specific location in person, seeing a location via virtual tour allows the viewer to easily see the location with immense detail instead of relying on images, which can ultimately be misleading. For example, using a fishbowl lens on a camera can make an image of a room look bigger than it actually is.

Brand Hotspots — Within a virtual tour, companies can pinpoint hotspots, or designated buttons, for viewers to interact with. These buttons show the viewer more information about the location or object it’s near. For example, adding hotspot buttons on artifacts in a museum virtual tour can allow the viewer to learn more about an artifact of interest.

Who Uses Virtual Tour Software?

Virtual tours provide extensive benefits to professionals across many industries:

Real Estate Professionals — Virtual tours are common in the real estate industry. Photos and videos give added transparency to the home buying process, and virtual tours are an increasingly more valuable addition to property advertisements. Virtual tours give viewers a detailed look of the inside of a home for sale, helping potential buyers save time by preventing unnecessary in-person visits.

Marketing Professionals — Marketing professionals use virtual tour software for brand promotion. Since virtual tours can be easily shared on a website or social media platform, it can be leveraged for immersive brand awareness purposes.

Tourism Industries — Virtual tour software creates virtual visualizations of travel destinations so tourists have the ability to scope them out or visit a destination, such as a national park, in the comfort of their own home. A virtual tour accurately showcases destinations to tourists with inviting immersion and is an effective travel marketing tool.

Classrooms — Teachers who implement virtual tours into their curriculum present many learning opportunities to students. Students who have access to virtual tours can visit museums, tour cities, and visit other educational locations without needing to spend time and money on a field trip.

Kinds of Virtual Tour Software

360-Degree Tour — A 360-degree tours is the most common type of virtual tour. It uses images curated by 360-degree cameras or stitched images, giving it a spherical effect. Viewers can browse the panorama to get a full view of a designated location, while having the ability to rotate or zoom in on a specific detail.

3D Tour — A 3D tour offers an increased sense of a location’s perspective. These 3D views are ideal for viewers who are interested in the architecture of a location, as it better showcases a location’s size and dimensions.

Virtual Tour Software Features

Hotspots — Interactive hotspots make virtual tours more engaging and informative. When a viewer approaches a hotspot within the virtual tour, they’re able to press it and reap the additional information it provides. Typically, hotspots are useful for explaining a specific area or item in the location. Hotspots can also hold notes, external links, or embedded videos.

File Recovery — For cloud-based solutions, file recovery is a useful feature that prevents users from losing an already-created virtual tour.

Instant Publishing — Once a virtual tour is made, it can quickly be published and shared to media platforms.

Drag and Drop — For non-coders, the drag-and-drop feature allows for quick and easy edits to a virtual tour. While editing, simply drag and place hotspots, audio, and images to an area of interest to curate the best experience for viewers in a short amount of time.

Trends Related to Virtual Tour Software

Digital Assistance — While virtual tours are informative on their own, the existence of a virtual assistant within a virtual tour goes even deeper into the realm of virtual reality. This would allow viewers to communicate with a virtual assistant, like a chatbot, and inquire about the location they are viewing. This gives a more conversational, curated experience for the viewer.

Potential Issues with Virtual Tour Software

Cost — Investing in a high-quality 360-degree camera is a pricey endeavor. Additionally, image quality is heavily reliant on the quality of the camera itself. Luckily, many virtual tour solutions are bundled with a high-quality camera, offsetting some of the cost and saving time for buyers.

Software and Services Related to Virtual Tour Software

Real Estate Virtual Tour Software — Virtual tour software specifically for real estate professionals helps real estate agents and property managers market their properties through the creation of virtual visualizations of the interior of a home or commercial space.

VR Visualization Software — With VR visualization software, users can virtually walk into their data and study it from every perspective. With the 360-degree sphere that VR offers, users have an endless amount of space to display data.