INITVIRTUAL.COM

A virtual tour is a simulation of traveling through a certain place. This simulation is achieved through the use of video and audio and often involves other sensations as well. Typical virtual tours, such as the Oztrek at the Sydney Tower by Zalman Silber of New York’s Skyride fame, employ motion seating in specially designed theaters that are kinetically synchronized with onscreen events and actions to create a you-are-there feeling. In the future, advanced technologies now under development are expected to also simulate the very smells of a place through the deployment of olfactory chemicals!

Indeed, develop proceeds apace on fully fulfilling the promise of virtual technologies, from special screens that work in combination with special glasses to achieve three-dimensional effects to those even more advanced screens that do not require any glasses at all. After all, the idea of a virtual tour has been around for several decades now, and so their implementation has continued to improve with an ever more realistic quality with each passing decade. In the ’70s it was simple movie screens, while the ’80s introduced motion seating combined with three-dimensional technology. Right now, the state-of-the-art awaits the development of next-generation hydraulic motors that can are computerized and can react even faster. Originally a development for military and then civilian pilot training, the latest models of these simulators have still to trickle down for civilian use.

All that is a long way from the first self-proclaimed virtual tour was conducted in 1994 by the venerable British Museum, which involved a computer controlled laserdisc system to provide a virtual walk-through of a fourteenth-century English castle attended by none other than Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II herself. Since then, virtual tours are mostly associated with wholesale real estate investment over the worldwide web.

Virtual tours are very popular with the real estate industry for obvious reasons. They allow prospective buyers to view faraway properties, giving a good enough idea for deciding whether an actual site visit is warranted. Sophisticated “full service” tours of this kind provide not just panoramic views and walk-throughs but also interactive floor plans and, even, customizable layouts to help envision all the styling options that are possible. Such virtual tours are typically associated with a Multiple Listing Service. As can be imagined, real estate listings online that offer virtual tours receive a whole lot more clicks and views than those without, up to twice as many according to some estimates.