Software for creating dynamic virtual tours

Virtual tour is a combination of images, panoramic views, plans, videos, sounds and ... that lets people to visit (virtually) and find information about a place (or object) without actually being in place.

Virtual tour can be used for lots of businesses:
:: Tourism centers and hotels
can present their services.
:: Real estate agents
can present properties.
:: Companies and organizations
can present their services, activities and branches.
:: Exhibitions And Fairs
can present their exhibitors.
:: Shopping centers and malls
Can enable visiting and shopping virtually for their customers.
:: Universities and colleges
can present their services and branches.
:: Museums and art galleries
can extend their visitors.
And many others

There was lots of problem for having a reasonable virtual tour

:: Virtual tours cost too much to create.
:: Creating Virtual tours needs lots of programming and working with complicated tools like Adobe Flash.
:: Virtual tours was completely static and hard to modify.

Virtual Tour Engine solve all of these problems and many others. Using virtual tour engine you can create a virtual tour through the web without having any knowledge about programming or working with tools like Adobe Flash. After all your virtual tour is dynamic and easy to change.

Main Advantages of Using Virtual Tour Engine
Here are the main advantages of using Virtual Tour Engine for creating virtual tours instead of developing a hard coded instance using tools like Adobe Flash, java applets, Quick time or ...:

No Programming & Web Development Needed:

Creating a common Interactive virtual tour needs cooperating with very professional web developers. This makes the cost very high. In the Virtual Tour Engine you don’t need to know any thing about web programming for creating an interactive virtual tour. You should only prepare the graphical content and connect them to your data through your control panel. Also for changing your content you don’t need to work with any complicated tools or upload any thing. You can do it with your control panel too. Please note that knowing about web development and Adobe Flash is not needed for creating virtual tours using Virtual Tour Engine, but knowing about them helps you to create better virtual tours.

Interactivity:

Using RIA (Rich Internet Application) ability, virtual tours created by Virtual Tour Engine interact with every users mouse move and do not act like simple web page. For example by a simple mouse move user can move in panoramic views and navigate between them.

Every virtual tour produced by Virtual Tour Engine is a RIA. It means visitors do not have to wait for any server response during browsing in virtual tour except downloading content, and every logical action like changing current scene or changing language is processed in client side.

Multilingualism:

Every virtual tour can be developed in an unlimited number of languages. Virtual tour owners can have a specific URL for his virtual tour in any language or have all of them in a same URL (see “virtual tour URL generator” in virtual tour administration Homepage). All the left-to-right and right-to-left languages supported in Virtual Tour Engine, and you can help us add your native language to Virtual Tour Engine active languages collection. During the implementation of RIA (rich internet application) ability, whenever a virtual tour visitor switches between virtual tour languages, no transaction with the server was made; all the contents switch to the targeted language on the fly in client. Language collection of every virtual tour is extendable and editable in Virtual Tour Engine and virtual tour owner can add languages to it contacting his/her administrator.

Full Web-based Content Management Control Panel:

It’s a very common need for a virtual tour owner to make changes in his virtual tour content. Using Virtual Tour Engine you could simply change your content from web whenever or wherever you wish. You don’t need to download any application or contact anyone to manage your content, change them or change the way your virtual tour looks to visitors.

No Needs to High Size And Uncommon plug-ins:

Lots of common virtual tours need download and installing of uncommon plug-ins to view in users computer. For example user needs to download Java Virtual Machine or Apple Quick Time Player for seeing these virtual tours. Downloading every one of these plug-ins take more than 30 minutes in a low bandwidth connection. This make seeing a virtual tour difficult for visitors. Besides some of this plug-ins could not install easily in users computer. In virtual tours created by Virtual Tour Engine, the only plug-in that users need to visit is Adobe Flash Player. This plus-in is the most popular plug-in and very low in size. Using Flash Player makes VTE virtual tours easier to visit instead of others. Please keep in mind that using this plug-in doesn’t mean that you need to know about creating flash files or programming them for working with Virtual Tour Engine.

Distributed Content Management:

In some businesses there are too many people responsible for contents. In a shopping mall virtual tour or a food court virtual tour or a fair virtual tour, let us say, there are lots of people that have access to the latest and exact information about their own business. Using Virtual Tour Engine you can make Items named “virtual booth” that have a separate username and password and provide services for presenting a general business. Using virtual booths, you can manage your virtual tour distributed and separate businesses managed by their owners. A Virtual booth is completely independent from your virtual tour for content management and can simply be accessed by a simple URL so your partial business owners can use them as an independent small content management system like their web sites.

Searchable Content:

In most using technologies virtual tour content is static and definitely isolated from other web contents, so visitors cannot search in their contents anyhow. Using Virtual Tour Engine, you let your visitors search in your virtual tour content without any kind of development needs. This feature also made users do advanced search in your content using categories your administrator made available for your virtual tour. Any virtual booth owner can declare his virtual tour content subjects by assigning related categories to his virtual booth (for your categories you must contact your administrator). Your content is also available to search engines for crawling and after a few times your content appeared in search result of search engines like Google , Yahoo and ... .

Full Google Analytics Integration:

For every web content owner, knowing about his/her content visitor’s behavior is a very important matter. Google analytics is one of the best tools available for knowing about a web content visitor’s traffic and behaviors. Using Virtual Tour Engine you could integrate your virtual tour and Google analytics to monitor your virtual tour traffic. For this reason, you just need to send your Google analytics script to your administrator. This feature is also available for every virtual booth independently.

Spot Able Panorama Views:
Using simple flat panorama images from your real environment (full 360-degree or partial view) you can let your visitor see panoramic views from points in your subject and make rotations on it. These panoramic views also are spottable, so you can make spots on them and assign some actions to spots like visit some content, view a virtual booth, go to another panoramic point or… .

Different Versions for Different Internet Connections:

One of the greatest concerns on the web is optimizing content size for optimum user experience. All of your virtual tour visitors do not have the same internet connection and ability of downloading content. Using Virtual Tour Engine you can provide different URLs for low band width users (dial up for example) and high band width users (ADSL for example). In fact, your content is the same in both, but Virtual Tour Engine in broad band mode automatically finds your visitor next targets and preloads them for less user interruption for loading and causes better user experience in result.

Address able Content:

In most technologies a Virtual Tour is an isolated content and has client side rules for navigation though you can not direct visitors to a specific position in your virtual tour. For example, if you have a virtual tour for a building with 10 rooms you can’t guide your visitor to Room Number 7 directly. You just can direct your visitor to your virtual tour entrance and hope that your visitor finds the content you want. Using Virtual Tour Engine you can solve this problem and have a different URL for every scene in your virtual tour (see “virtual tour URL generator” in virtual tour administration Homepage).

Full Customizable Content:
Virtual tour administrator could customize graphical properties of his/her virtual tour

Using Virtual Tour Engine, you can customize your Virtual Tour in many ways. Many of these properties are available by virtual designer panel like: size, background color, background tile, introduction, default loading policy, etc. You can customize many other properties by contacting your administrator like panorama pane size, Google analytics script, priority of performance to better display and many other features.

No Programming & Web Development Needed: Creating a common Interactive virtual tour needs cooperating with very professional web developers. This makes the cost very high. In the Virtual Tour Engine you don’t need to know any thing about web programming for creating an interactive virtual tour. You should only prepare the graphical content and connect them to your data through your control panel. Also for changing your content you don’t need to work with any complicated tools or upload any thing. You can do it with your control panel too. Please note that knowing about web development and Adobe Flash is not needed for creating virtual tours using Virtual Tour Engine, but knowing about them helps you to create better virtual tours. Interactivity: Using RIA (Rich Internet Application) ability, virtual tours created by Virtual Tour Engine interact with every users mouse move and do not act like simple web page. For example by a simple mouse move user can move in panoramic views and navigate between them. Every virtual tour produced by Virtual Tour Engine is an RIA. It means visitors do not have to wait for any server response during browsing in virtual tour except downloading content, and every logical action like changing current scene or changing language is processed in client side. Multilingualism: Every virtual tour can be developed in an unlimited number of languages. Virtual tour owners can have a specific URL for his virtual tour in any language or have all of them in a same URL (see “virtual tour URL generator” in virtual tour administration Homepage). All the left-to-right and right-to-left languages supported in Virtual Tour Engine, and you can help us add your native language to Virtual Tour Engine active languages collection. During the implementation of RIA (rich internet application) ability, whenever a virtual tour visitor switches between virtual tour languages, no transaction with the server was made; all the contents switch to the targeted language on the fly in client. Language collection of every virtual tour is extendable and editable in Virtual Tour Engine and virtual tour owner can add languages to it contacting his/her administrator. Full Web-based Content Management Control Panel: It’s a very common need for a virtual tour owner to make changes in his virtual tour content. Using Virtual Tour Engine you could simply change your content from web whenever or wherever you wish. You don’t need to download any application or contact anyone to manage your content, change them or change the way your virtual tour looks to visitors. No Needs to High Size And Uncommon plug-ins: Lots of common virtual tours need download and installing of uncommon plug-ins to view in users computer. For example user needs to download Java Virtual Machine or Apple Quick Time Player for seeing these virtual tours. Downloading every one of these plug-ins take more than 30 minutes in a low bandwidth connection. This make seeing a virtual tour difficult for visitors. Besides some of this plug-ins could not install easily in users computer. In virtual tours created by Virtual Tour Engine, the only plug-in that users need to visit is Adobe Flash Player. This plus-in is the most popular plug-in and very low in size. Using Flash Player makes VTE virtual tours easier to visit instead of others. Please keep in mind that using this plug-in doesn’t mean that you need to know about creating flash files or programming them for working with Virtual Tour Engine. Distributed Content Management: In some businesses there are too many people responsible for contents. In a shopping mall virtual tour or a food court virtual tour or a fair virtual tour, let us say, there are lots of people that have access to the latest and exact information about their own business. Using Virtual Tour Engine you can make Items named “virtual booth” that have a separate username and password and provide services for presenting a general business. Using virtual booths, you can manage your virtual tour distributed and separate businesses managed by their owners. A Virtual booth is completely independent from your virtual tour for content management and can simply be accessed by a simple URL so your partial business owners can use them as an independent small content management system like their web sites. Searchable Content: In most using technologies virtual tour content is static and definitely isolated from other web contents, so visitors cannot search in their contents anyhow. Using Virtual Tour Engine, you let your visitors search in your virtual tour content without any kind of development needs. This feature also made users do advanced search in your content using categories your administrator made available for your virtual tour. Any virtual booth owner can declare his virtual tour content subjects by assigning related categories to his virtual booth (for your categories you must contact your administrator). Your content is also available to search engines for crawling and after a few times your content appeared in search result of search engines like Google , Yahoo and ... . Full Google Analytics Integration: For every web content owner, knowing about his/her content visitor’s behavior is a very important matter. Google analytics is one of the best tools available for knowing about a web content visitor’s traffic and behaviors. Using Virtual Tour Engine you could integrate your virtual tour and Google analytics to monitor your virtual tour traffic. For this reason, you just need to send your Google analytics script to your administrator. This feature is also available for every virtual booth independently. Spot Able Panorama Views: Using simple flat panorama images from your real environment (full 360-degree or partial view) you can let your visitor see panoramic views from points in your subject and make rotations on it. These panoramic views also are spottable, so you can make spots on them and assign some actions to spots like visit some content, view a virtual booth, go to another panoramic point or… . Different Versions for Different Internet Connections: One of the greatest concerns on the web is optimizing content size for optimum user experience. All of your virtual tour visitors do not have the same internet connection and ability of downloading content. Using Virtual Tour Engine you can provide different URLs for low band width users (dial up for example) and high band width users (ADSL for example). In fact, your content is the same in both, but Virtual Tour Engine in broad band mode automatically finds your visitor next targets and preloads them for less user interruption for loading and causes better user experience in result. Address able Content: In most technologies a Virtual Tour is an isolated content and has client side rules for navigation though you can not direct visitors to a specific position in your virtual tour. For example, if you have a virtual tour for a building with 10 rooms you can’t guide your visitor to Room Number 7 directly. You just can direct your visitor to your virtual tour entrance and hope that your visitor finds the content you want. Using Virtual Tour Engine you can solve this problem and have a different URL for every scene in your virtual tour (see “virtual tour URL generator” in virtual tour administration Homepage). Full Customizable Content: Virtual tour administrator could customize graphical properties of his/her virtual tourUsing Virtual Tour Engine, you can customize your Virtual Tour in many ways. Many of these properties are available by virtual designer panel like: size, background color, background tile, introduction, default loading policy, etc. You can customize many other properties by contacting your administrator like panorama pane size, Google analytics script, priority of performance to better display and many other features.