Panowalker is a brand new solution for realistic walkthrough virtual tour creating.
Panowalker accepts spherical and cylindrical panoramic images. Spherical panoramic images can be obtainted through stitching - use your fisheye lens and digital camera to shoot fisheye images and stitch them with panoramic images stitching software like Easypano Panoweaver. Cylindrical panoramic images can be obtained from 360 degree panoramic attachment, like Kaidan 360 One VR and 0-360 Panoramic Optic - use these attachments to get donut pictures and then use the software from the equipment provider to unwrap the image and get the cylindrical panorama.
In order to create a walkthrough effect in the virtual tour, the panoramas should be taken equidistantly. When shooting the fisheye images or one-shot images, you need to make sure the distance between every adjacent shooting point is the same. The dimension of each panorama should be the same (width under 2000 and height under 1000), in order to make the tour smooth.
The workflow of Panowalker is quite simple. You just need to import the panoramic images that you have taken and import a map of the virtual tour place. Then you can set a path in the map to decide which way you want the tour to go.
The virtual tours can be used in real estate, tourist, restaurant, hotel and many other fields. It is powerful because the walking path leads the viewer to walk in the place to experience the whole view. Conventional virtual tours are made up of panoramic images and still images which are connected with hotspots. While in realistic walkthrough virtual tours, you don't need to click any hotspot, but only click "step forward" to walk freely - you can stop at any point to turn around and see the panoramic view.