Actual Education Interactive Guided Tours

How Do You Make An Interactive Guided Tour?

On this page we will share some of the tricks and tools we use to create a virtual tour. Most virtual tours are used online as adverts for holiday locations or for real estate. It is rare to get ones which are as large and as detailed as ours. So what exactly is involved in making a typical Actual Education virtual tour?

Before we do any shooting we need to research the area. This is the most important difference between our tours and most others - almost every scene we shoot has been carefully planned to bring you an interesting or relevant story. This is also why we sometimes include some very strange scenes!

Strange Shots, Superb Stories

A good example of this is the still image to your left. This was taken from one of our Greyfriars Kirkyard panoramic photos. It seems that the shot is too close to a temporary building - not the prettiest scene possible. Wouldn't it have been better to take this shot further into the Kirkyard, where you can see more of the tombs and headstones which make up this historic burial ground? Well, the small round stumpy piece of rock is actually the burial place of James Douglas. Douglas was the Regent (effective ruler) of Scotland, laid siege to Edinburgh Castle in the destructive 'Lang Siege', was beheaded by the king he fought for and buried here. The King eventually relented and allowed his head to be buried with the body. Some time after...

Now, wouldn't that have been a bad story to miss out on?

Getting Dizzy With Digital Photography!

So how do we take the photos? At the heart of all Actual Education virtual tours are panoramic photographs. These are also sometimes called 360 photographs because they let you look around 360 degrees. We take at least four photographs for each scene. One on each of the compass points and one which looks straight up. Sometimes, especially if we are shooting indoors, we will take two or three times as many of these fisheye photos. These are then all combined into the 360 degree scenes you get in your virtual tours. The video on the right will explain this process.

A Stitch In Time...

Now we have our four images we have to use some computer wizardry to 'stitch' them together to create one single panoramic image. We use special software from Easypano to stitch the images together into a single scene. We then use another piece of software to link these scenes together into a tour. At this point we will add in archive images, maps, text, audio and other still images. This then gives you your completed virtual tour.