The next best thing to being there

A Virtual Tour is a set of photographs and interactive movies that simulate a place. Users can point and click their way through the tour, and understand how the real place is laid out.

The movies allow the user to look around in a full circle--or even up and down. Point and click from room to room. Movies run in a program called Quicktime, available free on the Internet.

In the near future, we will offer Virtual Tours that do not require any special software to run. Stay tuned!

 

Virtual tours are especially useful for showing real estate, but they can also be entertaining in and of themselves. EXCELLENT graphics offers for sale a particularly engrossing Virtual Tour of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. Click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Real Estate

The perfect way to show a property without actually going there. Virtual Tours can be posted on the Internet, or copied to CD for distribution to clients. EXCELLENT graphics offers space on this Web Place to show your properties. Click here.
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How the movies are made

Each panoramic movie is made of several images. A simple cylindrical image consists of about 12 photos; a full cubic panorama requires about 60 (depending on the camera lens). Special software stitches the individual photos into a single image, compensating for lens distortion and lighting variations. The result is a QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality) file that lets you look all around, zoom in in out, and click to go to the next panorama.

QuickTime

The highest quality Virtual Tours require a program called QuickTime 5 or later to run. This is a free program, available on the Internet for Macintosh and PC computers. Since the QuickTime player is shareware, it can be distributed for free with Virtual Tours on CD.

Tours can also be made to run without QuickTime, but the quality is slightly lower, and the loading time can be longer. Click here to see a sample of a stand-alone panorama.
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Virtual Tours on CD

The best way to do it! CDs allow much larger and higher quality movies without the download time of the Internet. EXCELLENT graphics can produce the CDs from start to finish, including the labels and covers. Click here.

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Entertainment

A great way to kill a few hours. Like a video game without a goal. If you like to explore, a Virtual Tour is the perfect diversion. Our premier Virtual Tour on CD ROM is The Archie Bray Foundation: A Photographic Exploration. Shot over several months from 2002 to 2003, this immense tour takes you to virtually every nook and cranny of the internationally renowned Ceramic Arts institute. Over 2300 photographs, plus 10 panoramic movies arranged in a point-and click exploration. Includes maps and historical information. Click here.
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Lewis and Clark Caverns.
Six full panoramas of the main rooms of this stunning and surreal cavern. This CD ROM also contains virtual tours of Lost Lake near Fort Benton, Rock City near Valier, and Makoshika State Park near Glendive, plus other panoramas of points of interest around the state of Montana. Click here for a low-resolution sample of the Lewis and Clark Caverns. To visit Makoshika State Park, go to the Virtual Tour Gallery, click "More" and then turn right and step outside.

Suggested retail price, $20.

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The Paradise Room of Lewis and Clark Caverns

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Panoramic photos are created with the same technology that produces Virtual Tours. Instead of a movie, the stitched images are saved as a photograph. Perfect for real estate fliers! Click here.

Rates See Real Estate Specials

$25 setup fee. First 5 panoramas: $50 per cylindrical; $100 per spherical. Next 10 panoramas: $45 per cylindrical; $85 per spherical. Each panorama after that: $40 per cylindrical; $75 per spherical. Each simple photo is $5.

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Why is a VR movie better than a regular movie?

A regular movie doesn't let you turn around and see where you came from. It doesn't let you take both forks in a road. It doesn't let you zoom in and out. A Virtual Reality movie is almost like being there, and lets you control where you go and what you see, instead of just following a camera around.

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