How to create a virtual tour?

The demand for virtual tours is increasing and more and more companies are looking for professional virtual tours for their products. As a business or company, it can be cost-saving and practical to learn how to create virtual product tours or hire someone to do it for you. Either way, this step-by-step guide to creating virtual tours can help you get started.

Step 1: Equipment
There are three things you need to take a 360° virtual tour. A tripod, software, and a 360° camera. Using a DSLR to record 360° videos is possible, but time-consuming. On the other hand, the market is flooded with affordable 360° cameras suitable for recording 360° videos and tours. A variety of cameras such as Ricoh Theta Z1, Insta360 One X2 or Trisio Lite2 are some of the 360 cameras that are great for recording virtual tours. The tripod must be suitable for the 360 camera to ensure that no interference or unwanted elements, such as the tripod itself, get into the output. And as for the software, most 360 cameras have their own software that offers intuitive editing capabilities. But you can also use Adobe Lightroom, a very popular 360 editing software.

Step 2: Set up

Place the tripod-mounted camera at the average human height in the room for which you want to record the 36° tour. Make sure that the camera is in the center of the room and that there are no objects or walls within one meter of the lens.

Now select the desired shooting mode, HDR or RAW. Most 360° cameras allow shooting in HDR mode. HDR produces high quality by automatically taking three separate images and stitching them together.

Step 3: Take photos

Since 360° cameras shoot the entire room at once, you’ll need to go to another room and click with a timer or your smartphone via the 360 camera’s app. Once you have the images, you need to retrieve and edit the image content – this is the last step. It takes a while to master virtual tour photography. But once you get used to it, it’s quite easy.

Step 4: Editing

This is the post-processing stage, where you “stitch” the images you’ve taken. While some 360° cameras offer automatic stitching capabilities, software-based editing can help create high-quality, seamless 360° images.

Step 5: Create a virtual tour

This is the final step, and you’re ready to go! There are many free and paid software that you can use to upload the edited 360° images and create your virtual tour. However, the VRdirect platform stands out for the ease of editing the software, the easy-to-use software interface, and the one-click publishing capability. It allows you to publish virtual tours on the go.
And that’s it! You are ready to create your first virtual tour!