|
HD Virtual Tour Singapore |
Excluding some remote countryside’s web has
pervaded every nook and corner of the human habitat, so what is the need of an
offline virtual tour or for that matter anything that is offline? There are so
many reasons why offline HD Virtual Tour
are relevant still today. Let's discuss one by one.
- Cost:
State of the art online virtual tours sometimes become prohibitively expensive.
Creating a better online virtual tour
and maintaining it, both are expensive. Registering domain (if you don't have a
web presence), developing virtual tour content and making them web-ready takes
a lot. Offline web development eliminates many of these things.
- Technology:
Online virtual tours rely largely on the speed of data transfer on the net and
the processing speed of computers. There have been instances of computer crash.
It also requires the understanding of several nitty gritty related to web
technology in addition to just creating a 3D virtual tour. An executable
offline virtual tour can run fairly smooth on all i386s and Macs. Besides, it
does not require the ever upcoming web know-hows.
- Accessibility:
One can carry an offline virtual tour package in a disk or a business diskette
whereas any online virtual resource can be accessed if you are connected to the
net. With the disk/diskette with your pocket you are can always get a peek on
the contents. You might ignore the fact but a considerable part of the globe is
still not connected to the much hyped web.
- Fleeting
nature: As a native can you recall exactly what you visited on the net
yesterday? I can't. And many of us will agree with me. Because web is so
cluttered that we do more skipping to the sleek pages that actually read them.
Eight years back I was getting more relevant information on the web on Google
search, but today I am carried to a business portal 90% of the time. I end up
at a boutique starting a search for aesthetics of female beauty. Offline
virtual resource is specific and targeted.
- Recall
Value: A High Resolution VR
Photography has much recall value than an online one. Because you are at
leisure you can look at it, probably you won't tend to skip it for the junks.
- Niche
Marketing: Online resources have been targeted towards a homogeneous
traffic. The web has proliferated to a bewildering extent. And it is
increasing. If you know for sure that you are going to deal a few niche markets
than it better with offline virtual tour. A company manufacturing Airbuses
should better push a virtual tour
presentation to a private Flight Operator.
Enough discussed on the pros of offline virtual tour. Anyways,
"making a 3D virtual tour just the way you wanted" is creative and at
the same time calculative. I would make you cautious - using off-the-shelf
solutions is never worthwhile.
What is Interactive Virtual Tour?
High dynamic range (or HDR) Interactive Virtual Tour is a technique
that allows a photographer to take the same image at different exposures and
then blend them together to produce one image that features the best exposed
parts from each of the images.
For a virtual
tour this is particularly useful as most Virtual tours rely on a 360 degree
perspective so often you will be shooting both away from and into a light
source. Usually this would mean that you would have to compromise between the
two and potentially have dark patches that are underexposed on one side and
light patches that are over exposed on the other. Using HD Virtual Tour you can shoot at 3 or more exposure levels, low,
medium and high and then blend them together to create the perfect panorama.
If you are considering using HDR then my
advice is that you should first invest in a tripod and Panohead, the ghosting
caused by holding your camera by hand will cause you no end of trouble during
post processing and can even make your scene unstitch able. If you do invest in
these pieces of equipment then with a bit of experimentation and post
production patience you can create some beautiful HDR imagery for you virtual
tour. If you are looking to sell the 360 virtual tours you produce HDR is now
an industry standard and an essential tool to creating professional, vibrant
and well lit panoramas.
Exposure Bracketing
To take HDR images technically all you need is
a camera where you can manually change the exposure. You can then set the
camera in a fixed position on a tripod and take several images at different
exposures for use to create one HDR image. However this process is time
consuming, especially for a 360 virtual tour where you will need to take
several images for each scene to stitch together later. When your virtual tour contains 10+ scenes this
can become a massive time sink. If you are serious about virtual tours then I
highly recommend investing in a high end DSLR camera that features exposure
bracketing. Exposure bracketing is a feature on a camera that allows you to set
the exposures at 3 or more levels (usually low middle and high, then once you
press the shutter button the camera will take the images in quick succession.
This has the added benefit of reducing ghosting due to the greatly shortened
time between taking the images saved by not having to manually adjust the
exposure level.
Taking HDR Images
To take HDR images for your virtual tour you
need to have the camera set to manual exposure and white balance. Once I have
my camera and tripod set up I set my exposures by pointing the camera at the
most over exposed part of the panorama (the sun if outdoors, otherwise the
brightest light source). I then adjust the exposure until the image is just on
the dark side of clear (you may want to be careful here if the sun is fully
exposed as pointing the lens of your camera directly into the sun can cause
sensor damage.
Try not to have it pointing directly at the
sun and if you do then only for a few seconds). Once I have the base level set
to my satisfaction I adjust exposure bracketing to at least +2 and -2 (some
cameras are unable to stretch this far and you might have to take 2 bracketed
images). Now your camera should be set and ready to take exposure bracketed
images for HDR. You can test it by taking a sample picture, if the camera takes
3 images for each press of the shutter button then exposure bracketing is set
and you are ready. Now just take the images you would normally take for a
panorama and depending on how many you usually take (It vary between 6 and 12)
you should now have a set of three pictures for each one, one light, one normal
and one dark. For extra stability set your camera to a 2 second time delay,
this will combat ghosting or blurring due to tripod shake.
HDR and post processing
Now you have your HDR panoramic images for
your virtual tour you are ready to stitch them together. This can be done in a
number of ways; you can use your raw images to create HDR images before
stitching, you can stitch your images together using software that accommodates
HDR and allow it to fuse your HDR images for you or you can create separate
panoramas at each exposure level and fuse them together afterwards. Each of
these ways has merits and I highly recommend experimenting with each to find
which one suit you best.
HDR software: The HDR magic formula is to use
to stitch the images together then output three separate panoramas at different
exposures. Then use dedicated HDR software to fuse them together into one fully
HDR beautifully exposed panorama ready for use in Virtual Tour Services.