- | | - - |


	Products & Services

Virtual Tours

Panoramic virtual tours are an exciting web-based technology which allows users to view a cubic or spherical 360° x 180° representation of a scene allowing the user to view right up to the sky and all the way down to the floor, which can be displayed in such a way to enable the user pan and tilt using the mouse or keyboard arrow keys as a navigation tool to view the surroundings.

When viewing a virtual tour, the user may zoom in to view a subject, or zoom out to gain a better view of the surrounding area. Restraints may be included within each image, setting a maximum and minimum zoom capacity, thus avoiding distortion and pixalisation of the image. Each image is calibrated to get the best resolution, image clarity and data size

Navigation, Hyperlinks & Maps
As well as being able to pan and tilt the viewing angle of the scene, the users are also capable of moving from scene to scene though the use of links, which are placed within the panorama as a navigation tool allowing users to pass between panoramas in the same way as hyperlinks are used.

For example if a user moved over a door, if a hyperlink was active an arrow or finger pointing in that direction would appear. By selecting the left an example floor plan

mouse button the user would be transferred to the hyperlinks location which in this case could be an adjoining room or hallway, but can also be used as a means of providing information on a specific subject.

An alternative and effective method of navigation within a virtual tour is the use of maps or scenes which depict the layout of the virtual tour. For instance a tour of a house could use a CAD floor plan or 3D representation of each floor as a means of navigating between each room as the user can jump from room to room instead of navigating to the intended room or destination.
a speaker

Music & Audio Description
IT can often be an advantage to include music in a panorama to set the scene and provide an atmosphere to further immerse the user within the virtual environment. Spoken word may also be included to clearly describe the surroundings and history. rotate symbol

Automatically Rotate
The virtual tour can be set to automatically rotate at a pre-set rate displaying the surroundings without any user input, aiding the promotion of the surroundings.

Viewable Medium & Quality
Virtual Tours are available in a number of formats for use over the web or from CD, which include:

Quicktime	Apple's Quicktime plug-in provides high image quality and by far the most reliable and stable environment to view interactive virtual tours.
Java Applet	Java embedded panoramas provide good image quality but have the advantage of being viewable to a much wider audience. A plug-in is still required to be installed in order to view the virtual tour.
VRML	Virtual Reality Modelling Language or VRML is a web based environment which provides good image quality but requires a plug-in to be installed.
Shockwave 3D	Shockwave 3D requires the Macromedia Shockwave Plug-in in order to view interactive panoramas and provides good image quality.

The virtual tour is embedded within a web page and should load automatically if the appropriate plug-in is detected. The user is prompted before the page is displayed as to what download is required for each respective technology.

The end consumer of the product has been at the centre of the design and development of our interactive services. We have found that not all consumers have the same requirements or platforms to view the end results. A majority of UK Internet users currently still use a standard 56K dialup to access on-line services, while there are a number of mostly businesses whom use 128K ISDN services. Pittville Lake – Cheltenham

With broadband users always increasing, we feel it is necessary to offer our customers and their consumes a choice. We aim to offer two resolution and quality levels, moderate and high quality, giving the consumer the choice as to what quality and download time they wish to receive.

Still Images & Prints
High resolution still images can also be extracted from a panorama, plus we can print either wide aspect or circular prints of either a stock image from our gallery or from a virtual tour you have requested.
» visit the gallery

| |