What is the best website for hosting virtual tours?

[beane27rr]

Hello, I am looking to find out what is the best website to host these virtual tours. I currently have a basic site on Wix for images and contact info, but they are not great for hosting the tours. There is no HTML support so all of my customers with iphones can not see the tours. What sites do all of you load your tours on to? Any feedback would be huge help. I have some jobs coming up and I need help getting this thing figured out. Thak you

Ryan Beane

[JPS]

You might try http://www.viewat.org/ or https://www.360cities.net/ !


J-P.

[nigbo]

Try round.me
It is great. Was presented at the IVRPA conference in Prague and it is very easy to run.
You can construct your own tours there. (it is not meant for a tour created by pano2VR, but it is a quick and dirty way to publish

It even supports spilt views for Cardboard viewers like from google on an iPhone.

Have a look at http://round.me/tour/8790/view

This is one example I uploaded recently.
Nigbo

[Tony]

Hi Ryan,

It really comes down to what you want to do with the panorama in terms of presentation. From your post it's obvious that you want HTML support for mobile devices.

There are a number of free and paid 360˚ Panorama hosting sites that offer a range of services for panoramic photographers. The range of sites allow you to create tours, add multimedia elements, embed your panoramas/tours, publish to Google Earth and share via Social Media. The list is long and there is functionality to suit almost any requirement.

The question to ask yourself when choosing a site to host your panoramas is how do you want to be able to access and publish them outside of their respective sites, do you also want to be able to post your panoramas into a Facebook timeline or embed them into an external website such as your clients? All of the sites allow you to embed your panorama in an external website and provide the code to do so. But, what does it look like when it's embedded?

If it's going to be embedded on your client site what will the interface look like, can you brand it with your own or the client's logo, will it work across mobile devices and desktops with and without Flash installed?

I've created a blog post that features embedded panoramas from a number of sites that I upload my work to. You can see and test them in my blog post What does it look like? here http://tonyredhead.com/360panoramas/

Tony

[JPS]

Good job, Tony !

Now... WHICH of these did you find best ?

...and BTW, you seem to have forgotten ViewAt.org !


J-P.

[Tony]

Hi JPS,

Thanks, glad you like it.

WHICH of these did you find best?

Once again it comes down to what the final output is. From a portfolio point of view, ease of use, quality of interface I think it's hard to beat RoundMe. I'm doing a bit of development work for HMD's at the moment and the RoundMe VR support is excellent. No Pro options yet but I think that's in the works.

360Cities for a complete package and their Google Earth layer is a great service with Pro options, but as far as I know no Virtual Tour option but they do have VR support.

Spinattic, still in beta, is a contender. They have been very, very responsive in regard to a few issues I came across with their HTML implementation and jumped in and fixed them immediately and worth keeping an eye on.

Google Map Views use to be fantastic but their recent announcement of it's demise and their subsequent poorly implemented integration into Google Maps makes me wonder if there is a future in publishing panoramas on Google. https://productforums.google.com/forum/ ... pmVvkn_JLU

you seem to have forgotten ViewAt.org !

I think there are probably quite a few more to add (including Walkinto); these are just some of the ones I've published to. I'd seen VeiwAt.org but hadn't published anything so I signed up, uploaded a panorama and was surprised to find that it had to be approved before I could publish and embed it in the blog. Most of the other sites publish immediately. As soon as it's approved I'll embed it to see what it's like. (FYI: 8 hours since uploading and no approval)

Tony

[hum@no.id]

TourWrist and Viewat.org - it pioneers of panoramic hosting. Those "born" earlier than 360Cities. Platform TourWrist becomes to The Sphere.

https://www.tourwrist.com/panos/23760
https://www.thesphere.com/profile/64329
http://www.viewat.org/spaces/AstanaCapital/portfolio/

Oh!... for masochists still have Photosynth 2 (need install SilverLight)- https://photosynth.net/userprofilepage.aspx?user=GumirJ

[Tony]

I have to say I'm not that impressed with viewat.org. I signed up and uploaded my first panorama and it's been sitting in 'Pending Approval' for over a couple of days now. There's nothing in the FAQ about panoramas needing approval before they are made available and my email requesting clarification hasn't been answered. Quite different from Spinattic, RoundMe or 360Cities who either have forums for help or respond promptly. Let's hope they get in touch soon.

[hum@no.id]

ViewAt
I don't think they will change the policy... and service concept is outdated for today
Modern Trends will be similar to RoundMe services... IMO

ps. For the last time, the new panoramic services breed like rabbits ... maybe... we will soon see another dozen