Virtual Tours

[Jeff]

Just wondering how they do virtual tours of houses in real estate adverts.
Are the images taken with a still camera, stitched together and processed by some software? Are they taken with a movie camera?
I'm sure you guys will know.

Jeff

[glamy]

There is a number of softwares to make these virtual tours from photos. One I have is "Stitcher". It is expensive and maybe not the best

[Jeff]

Thanks glamy ,I will look into "Stitcher".

Jeff

[glamy]

Jeff,
As I say Stitcher is OK but still has a few bugs. You can try the free trial version. I would also look at some other ones, a quick search will give you different options like this one http://www.easypano.com/
Stitcher allows high resolution panoramas of any type for your photos (so does PTGui, good one), "hot spots" to guide through a building and all sorts of renditions. I find it quite unpredictable in memory usage... Look at the forum http://forum.realviz.com/realviz/Discussion-ST/liste_sujet-1.htm
They do have improved with the latest versions.

[glamy]

I forgot to mention you will definitely need a special head for virtual tours, multi-row or single-row, to render either in a circular, spherical or any other type. Close objects with proportionally far off walls in a room are harder to stitch than standard panoramas. The correction in perspective is much greater, often you find faults in the cornices. CS3 is not good at all in this regard compared to specialized softwares. Keep in mind I may be fussier than you average RE agent because the resolution on the net is not that good . A D70 and the 10.5 f/2.8 work well with Stitcher.
Anyway, If you want a go I can lend you my Manfrotto head (303 SPH) to see for yourself.

[Jeff]

Thank you for your kind offer,I was just sort of curious as to how you did a virtual tour.

Thanks again
Jeff