How We Make a Virtual Tour 

 

(Click 4th icon above.)

No matter what type of problem lighting we encounter in the darkest rooms of a property or the brightest part of its grounds, our method of photography will capture both the ambiance and the detail. It is known as Tone Mapped HDR (High Dynamic Range) and the process is explained below.

Different exposures are combined into one HDR image.

   

The HDR image is much brighter and shows detail in both the bright and dark areas.

              Traditional (Well exposed)                                          HDR (Perfect exposure)

Very few VR Tour Services use HDR, and none at the price we charge. (The cheapest is twice the cost, and gives two rooms less than we offer.)

Quality Assurance

We work on the basis of spending about eight to ten hours on each virtual tour.

It takes us about 20 minutes to set up, measure and photograph each room.

We take between 21 and 63 photographs per room.

For capture, the camera is mounted on a panoramic tripod head  and rotated into seven different positions.

At each position we may take as little as three photos for low contrast lighting or as many as nine if the sun is included in any shot. Back in the office, the images recorded are combined using a professional HDR program, into seven Tone Mapped Views.

These are then imported into a Stitching program and converted into a movie and sometimes a spherical image.

Our competitors often take much less time. In each room, they may shoot less than ten photos and from these, usually make a cylindrical panorama.

Cylindrical projection is restricted. It only lets you move left and right. We use cubic projection, so you can see the ceiling and the carpet when you look up and down.

The movies we have made are converted into Java Script format, and organised in a Web Publishing Program.

A navigational floor plan is produced with interactive links to movies of the individual rooms. 

The Virtual Tour is published to a folder and burned onto CD ROM.

We give you a CD Rom with all the material on it for inclusion in your own site, or publish it on our website and provide you with access to it. 

Publishing and hosting costs no more than a CD ROM. (Just £300 for six views and an interactive floor plan for navigation).