1. Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About How to Create a Virtual Reality Tour Lynn Whitelaw Director Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art William Haun Web Programmer/Analyst Web & Instructional Technology Services, St. Petersburg College

2. Agenda What Exactly is a Virtual Tour? The Different Tour Formats Which One is Best? - Pros & Cons What Stuff Do I Need to Create a Tour? Delivering Your Virtual Tour Other Issues to Consider with Virtual Tours Case Studies Discussion & Questions

3. What exactly is a Virtual Tour? A Virtual Tour allows a computer user to interact with an environment via a series or collection of images (still and/or moving). Interact –Virtual is a reference to Virtual Reality - an artificial environment which is experienced through sensory stimuli (as sights and sounds) provided by a computer and in which one's actions partially determine what happens in the environment Series or Collection –Series can be individual images the user navigates between –Collection can be several images stitched together into a single panoramic image (0 to 360 degrees)

4. What is NOT a Virtual Tour? Slideshows are NOT Virtual Tours Photo Albums are NOT Virtual Tours Videos are NOT Virtual Tours, they are Video Tours

5. Different Types of Tours HTML QuickTimeVR Java iPIX Shockwave/Flash

6. Format Pros & Cons: Things to Consider Target Audience Computer Compatibility & Requirements Plug-ins Required for End User Size of Download (Tour & Plug-in) Features & Customization options Quality of Image Resources Needed (Cost & Staff)

7. Tools Needed The Hardware –Computer –Digital Camera –Tripod –Panoramic Head (optional) –Turntable (optional) The Software –Stitching Software –Tour Creation Software –Webpage Creation Software

8. Delivering Your Virtual Tour Web CD-ROM DVD-ROM

9. Other Issues to Consider Security of your copyrighted images Cost of Maintenance & Ability to Update Portability Accessibility

10. Case Studies Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art –Flash & XML driven Virtual Tour Musée du Louvre –Quicktime VR & HTML driven Virtual Tour

11. Misc. Resources VRMag – Online Magazine dedicated solely to Virtual Tours & Photography - http://www.vrmag.orghttp://www.vrmag.org VR Photography Case Studies - http://vrphotography.com/data/pages/casestudies/casestudies.html http://vrphotography.com/data/pages/casestudies/casestudies.html Tutorial: Creating Javascript & HTML Virtual Tours - http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/server_archive/articles/creating_virtual_tours.html http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/server_archive/articles/creating_virtual_tours.html Other Cool Virtual Tours Arounder – Travel around the world via 360 full screen panoramas - http://www.arounder.com http://www.arounder.com FullScreenQTVR – A directory of extreme locations shot in 360 panoramas - http://www.fullscreenqtvr.comhttp://www.fullscreenqtvr.com POSCO Museum in Korea – The inspiration for the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Arts Flash-based Virtual Tour - http://museum.posco.co.kr/museum/docs/eng/mTour/s91b3060001m.jsp http://museum.posco.co.kr/museum/docs/eng/mTour/s91b3060001m.jsp

12. Vendors Tour Creation Software 360 Degrees of Freedom - http://www.360dof.com/http://www.360dof.com/ EasyPano – the virtual tour way - http://www.easypano.comhttp://www.easypano.com iPIX - http://www.ipix.comhttp://www.ipix.com Quicktime VR Authoring - http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtvr/ http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtvr/ Realviz - http://www.realviz.comhttp://www.realviz.com Squamish Media Group (QTVR extensions) - http://www.smgvr.com/ http://www.smgvr.com/ VRToolbox - http://www.vrtoolbox.com/vrthome.htmlhttp://www.vrtoolbox.com/vrthome.html Hardware Kaidan Panoramic Heads, Lenses, & Motors - http://www.kaidan.com/ http://www.kaidan.com/ Manfrotto Panoramic Heads - http://www.manfrotto.com/303SPH/ http://www.manfrotto.com/303SPH/