3DVista Stitcher v3.0 serial key or number

Since its foundation in 1999, 3DVista has been dedicating its time and passion to the development of high-class immersive imaging solutions. We develop software that allows you to create spectacular panoramas and multimedia virtual tours in the most intuitive and quick way - whether you’re an absolute beginner or a demanding professional. Accordingly, our mission is to combine image excellence and feature diversity with ease of use. By optimizing our software to the needs of real estate and tourism professionals, we have been able to become the preferred choice for those looking to professionally and cost effectively create their own 360° virtual tours.

Apart from offering the software to create tours yourself, 3DVista also offers a full-services package that covers the whole process from conceptualizing and on-site (taking the the photographic material) to publishing your presentations and virtual tours online for you. We have worked with large tourism companies and some of the best-known real estate businesses. Our clients come from over 70 countries and include famous software and security corporations equally as SMEs or individual freelancers and hobby photographers. 3DVista’s virtual tours and technology are multiplatform, so they are running on PC, Mac, iOS and Android, as well as under any browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE).

With our software you can create high quality panoramas, entire multimedia virtual tours and floor plans. Don’t worry if you are not familiar with photographic concepts - we prepared several video tutorials that will guide you step by step through the whole processes, explain basic concepts and give you advice on how to achieve the best results. Should you still have questions or doubts, do not hesitate to contact us directly.

We offer three types of programs that are directed at different needs.

3DVista Stitcher is the right program for you if you want to create high-quality panoramas in a flat format (comparable to a normal photo). The program’s one-click simplicity leads you step-by-step through the process until you are satisfied with your panorama. Without any technical skills, you can enhance your panoramas, add extras and take advantage of automatic color and exposure correction. If you’re not sure what a panorama is, click here.

3DVista Virtual Tour Suite is for those who want to create interactive 360-degree virtual tours. The difference to creating a flat panorama is the virtual tour’s immersiveness, interactivity and multimedia features (include photos, videos, audio and more). You can let your audience virtually visit and navigate through the scene. Depending on the scope of features and extras you wish, you can decide between the standard and the pro version. If you’re not sure what a virtual tour is or what you need it for, click here.

3DVista Floor Plan Maker is the right program for you if you want to display location layouts in an attractive and easy way. Especially useful for real-estate businesses and those who want to plan their own homes.

If you’re still having doubts, do not hesitate to contact us directly. Tell us about your needs and we will help you find the right solution for you.

Yes, it is. We develop our software and viewers entirely in house, which makes us independent from other supplies or possible supply chain problems. If there is a problem, we can have our full-time staff of software engineers fix it in no time. Furthermore, 3DVista regularly releases updates to the software and constantly innovates to always make your tours be the most impressive ones on the market.

Yes, we offer 30-day trial versions to all of our products. These trial versions contain the full scope of features and functions so that you can really be sure whether the program suits your needs. The panoramas and tours created with our trial versions contain watermarks. Once you are sure you like the program, you can purchase a license and start creating panoramas, virtual tours or floor plans without watermarks.

A panorama is comparable to a ‘flat’ photo with a wider field of view. If you want your panorama to come to life, you need to project this image inside a sphere. This is what will give you the impression of actually being there - You can then pan around, look up, down, left and right, and feel like you actually are in the middle of the scene. On top of that you can add interactivity, music, photos, videos and much more to enrich the experience. This spherical, immersive experience is what’s called a virtual tour. Check out our samples and demos here.

Immersion is the perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The immersive format displays your panorama as a spherical image that appears to surround the user. By converting your panorama into an immersive virtual tour (with 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite) you allow your users to navigate freely within the panorama (look left, right, up down, move from one panorama to the next one as if you would move from one room to the other, or open other media and info boxes integrated into the panorama). Immersiveness lets your users virtually step into the scenery and navigate their way through your tour. Immersiveness goes hand in hand with interactivity and both adjectives describe major features of what distinguishes a virtual tour from a plain photo or panorama.

You are buying a license, which is a permit to use our software for lifetime. In a field as fast-paced as the digital one, hardcopies become obsolete very quickly. We are trying to save you the extra time and costs of manufacturing and delivering something that we can deliver electronically and always up-to-date in just seconds. This is why we are only selling electronic copies, allowing you to start using the software right after purchase. Should you lose your electronic copy, you can always re-download the software from our website 24/7.

Once you purchased the software, there are no limits to its use. You can create an unlimited number of virtual tours both with 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite Standard and Pro. Furthermore, there is no limit of users that can see your virtual tours online.

Yes, the virtual tours created with 3DVista software are multiplatform and can be seen on Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad and Android and within any browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari etc.).

No, clients entering your webpage can watch and maneuver your virtual tours without having to download any additional software, players or plug-ins.

It is as easy as adding this one of these lines of code according to the aspect ratio you want to display:
- for 16:9
<div style="position:relative; height:0; padding-top:56.25%"><iframe style="position:absolute; top:0; left:0; width:100%; height:100%;" src="HTTP://DOMAIN/PATH/TO/INDEX.HTM" name="TOUR NAME" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="fullscreen; accelerometer; gyroscope; magnetometer; vr; camera; microphone"></iframe></div>
- for 4:3
<div style="position:relative; height:0; padding-top:75%"><iframe style="position:absolute; top:0; left:0; width:100%; height:100%;" src="HTTP://DOMAIN/PATH/TO/INDEX.HTM" name="TOUR NAME" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="fullscreen; accelerometer; gyroscope; magnetometer; vr; camera; microphone"></iframe></div>
- for 1:1
<div style="position:relative; height:0; padding-top:100%"><iframe style="position:absolute; top:0; left:0; width:100%; height:100%;" src="HTTP://DOMAIN/PATH/TO/INDEX.HTM" name="TOUR NAME" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="fullscreen; accelerometer; gyroscope; magnetometer; vr; camera; microphone"></iframe></div>

Registering the software means that you are proving the program that you have a valid license. All you need to do to register it, is opening the software and entering your username and password. You’ll have received this username and password, along with detailed instructions on how to register the software, right after purchase. In case you did not receive this email or accidently deleted it, here’s how it works: After downloading the program and when opening it you’ll be asked to enter a username and password for registration. The username is your email and the password is a randomly generated code, which you can change from the control panel if you wish. If you don’t know your password, you can get a new one in the registration window by inserting your username and clicking on "I forgot my password". We will then send you an email with instructions on how to retrieve or change your password. In case you still do not receive any email (make sure you check your spam folder), contact us.

You can install and use the software on two computers simultaneously – whether it's PC, Mac or both combined. If you replace your gear or want to use your software on yet another device you can always unregister the software from one computer and register it on a new one. You can do this for an unlimited number of times.

With our software you can create panoramas and virtual tours on any platform – PC and Mac. If you want to switch platforms, all you have to do is download the software again, in the according version (Mac or PC), and –when asked- enter your existing username and password. Should you have reached the limit of two computers registered, a list of the registered computers will appear and you will have to choose one of them for deregistration.

You don’t have to worry about keeping your software up to date – we do that for you. Our software has an automated updater already built in. When you run the software and there should be an update available, a window with a list of the new features will pop up and ask you to install. This way you don’t need to keep visiting our website to find out about updates.

Yes. All you need to do is contact us with your inquiry and we will send you a link to pay for the difference in price. This will automatically change your license to include 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite. After having paid, all you need to do is download 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite, install it and use it with the same username and password that you already have.

Yes. All you need to do is contact us and we will send you a link to pay for the difference in price. This will automatically change your license to include the Pro version. After having paid, all you need to do is download 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite Pro, install it and use it with the same username and password that you already have.

Of course, it does. No matter if you decide to buy 3DVista Stitcher, Virtual Tour Suite Standard or Pro the watermarks will disappear as soon as you register with your username and password (which indicates that you have a valid license). The panoramas and virtual tours will then be visible without watermarks.

Yes, you can replace our logo with your own in 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite Pro version.

Once purchased, the license is yours for lifetime. This means you can create as many virtual tours as you want, forever and for free. We will continue launching new features and functions (upgrades), which you can decide to purchase and activate, or not. Upon purchase of your license, we give you a year worth of upgrades for free. If you are interested in our hosting service, which lets you upload your tours to the internet without the need for knowledge about servers, FTP programs or hosting processes, you can always contract this optional service on a yearly basis in the "My Tours" tab in 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite. In this "My Tours" tab, you can also manage all of your hosting options (check tours, check space available, renew subscription etc.).

Updates provide fixes and improve the program's performance to make sure that what you once purchased, is useful forever. They're free, always.
Upgrades are equivalents to new software versions that bring new functions, tools and significant improvements. They can be purchased and are optional. Oh, and the first year is free!

You don't have to pay for upgrades. You can use your software without paying anything after the initial purchase and we will constantly support you with free updates that improve performance and convenience. So we will always have your back to guarantee, that what you once purchased, continues to be valuable to you. However, we also continuously launch completely new features, add-ons and functions that go beyond mere updates. Rather than releasing entirely new products for that, which you'd have to buy from scratch, we release these by means of upgrades to our existing software. This keeps things easier for you as you won't have to migrate your work to new software versions every time you wish to have a new feature. And it's a fraction of the cost, too. Upon purchasing the software license, we give you a year of upgrades for free. After that, you can decide, at any point, to purchase a year worth of upgrades for 149€. This will give you life-long access to any and all new features that we launch throughout that year. You can even decide to skip upgrades for a while, then purchase a year of upgrades later and you'll not only get the ones being launched throughout that year butt also all past upgrades that you had "saved" on, too.

Unless you have written permission from 3DVista, you are not allowed to transfer or sell your license to other users. While you cannot give away or resell your personal license to others, you are welcome to become an official 3DVista Reseller. For more information, click here.

We use PayPal for our online transactions, so you can pay with any credit card and of course with your PayPal account. Should you need to make a wire transfer, please contact us and we will provide you with our corporate bank account details.

Yes. For information, please email your inquiry to sales@3dvista.com

If you’re a student or an educational organization, we can offer you a 10% discount. Just contact us directly or send your inquiry to sales@3dvista.com.

Some recent security changes in OSX 10.9.5 and 10.10 have caused some issues resulting in this error message.
To solve this, first please go to System Preferences and then click on Security & Privacy. After that you will want to click on the lock in the bottom left corner, and then make sure Allow apps downloaded from: Mac App Store and identified developers. In some cases you will see the option to open anyway during this step.
After that please go to the Applications folder and right-click on the 3DVista .app file, and select Open from that list. You will see the same message, but will have an "Open" button to allow 3DVista software to launch.

A panorama is the result of stitching multiple photos to get one single image that covers a wide field of view (up to 360°). You can either display a panorama in a plain – like a flat photo – or you can view it in a spherical format (in a viewer that allows you to turn left, right, up and down). You can always preview your panorama in the spherical way within 3DVista Stitcher but in order to publish it in the spherical format, you will need to use 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite.

3DVista software allows you to create special forms of panoramas, such as:
Live Panorama, which is a seamless time-lapse panorama created out of various panoramas of the same spot taken at different times.
Adaptive HDR Panorama dynamically adjusts exposure levels depending on where you are looking in real time. As opposed to having the optimal exposure levels fixed in your panoramas, this lets you experience how exposure and luminosity adapt in every area of the panorama just as the human iris would.

If you are curious and want to try these new forms of panoramas that only 3DVista offers to this extent, download the free trial of our software. The trial versions contain the exact same features as the purchasable versions so you will be able to really see what the software can do for you.

A full panorama covers the entire horizontal 360° (full rotation). As opposed to other software programs, 3DVista software allows you to create partial panoramas, too. Whenever you have parts that you don’t want to display, you can create virtual tours that do not rotate a full 360° horizontally. The partial will simply 'bounce back' once it reaches either end of the horizontal view. Have a look at the demos and samples to see the difference.

There are only three basics that you need to create a panorama:

• a camera (or even only a mobile phone)
• a computer
• and 3DVista Stitcher software

In case you want to create one of 3DVista’s special panoramas, such as Live Panorama or Adaptive HDR Panoramas, or simply want to publish your panoramas in an immersive format, you will also need to have 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite software.

Besides these three basic ingredients, there are some further hardware gears that can help you in taking panoramic photos and will improve your results:

• A tripod, which gives you stabilization so that you’re not moving too much while shooting the different angles (more accurate stitching results)
• A panohead that will (1) keep the camera in the center of the tripod to avoid changes in perspective between your individual shots and (2) automatically help you maintain the exact right angles between shots so that you don’t have to worry about sufficient overlap anymore
• A special lens can help you minimize the number of shots necessary for a panorama. While really any camera will do and is compatible with 3DVista software, there are special lenses that can improve the quality of your panoramas and virtual tours remarkably
  • A wide angle lens, for example, has a bigger field of view than standard 35mm lenses, which means you will need less shots to create a panorama and therefore less pictures to process in the Stitcher. This will make the stitching process considerably faster and more precise.
  • A fisheye lens has an extraordinarily wide field of view. An image taken with a fisheye lens can be equivalent to four images taken with a standard lens, meaning that you will need even less shots to create a panorama. There are three different types of images depending on the type of the fisheye lens: Rectangular fisheye lenses, semi-circular and circular fisheye lenses which all vary in the level of vignetting they have. We recommend rectangular or alternatively semi-circular fisheye lenses for shooting panoramas.

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Absolutely. No matter what program you used to create your panoramic images (spherical or cylindrical, full 360 or partial), you can import them into 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite and include them in your virtual tours. Integrate and work with your panorama just like you would do with any panorama created with 3DVista Stitcher.

in 3DVista Stitcher you can import your source images in the following formats:

• JPG/JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg)
• PNG (.png)
• BMP (.bmp)
• TIFF (.tiff)
• GIF (.gif)

No, you can’t. 3DVista Stitcher is stitching software, not RAW decoding software. If it would allow RAW images as input, it would have to decode the RAW files with default values, which would render the whole purpose of RAW shooting useless. Therefore, we advise you to treat your RAWs in dedicated editing software, such as Lightroom, before importing them to 3DVista Stitcher.

3DVista Stitcher enables you to export your stitched images in the following formats:

• JPG/JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg)
• PNG (.png)
• PSD (.psd)
• TIFF (.tiff)

You can export your panoramas to the following projection formats:

• Equirectangular (For spherical panos)
• Cubic, 6 Faces
• Rectilinear
• Cylindrical (for printing and QTVR)
• Fisheye Equidistance Full Frame
• Fisheye Stereographics Full Frame
• Mercator
• Transverse Mercator
• Sinusoidal
• Lambert Equal
• Lambert Azimuthal
• Albers Equal Area Conical
• Miller Cylindrical
• Panini
• Architectural
• Fisheye Orthographic Fullframe
• Fisheye Equisolid Fullframe

HDR or High Dynamic Range panoramas are a common feature in photography. A normal photo without HDR tends to have areas that are over- or underexposed – usually both – which results in a loss of detail in bright or dark areas. HDR compensates for this loss of detail by capturing multiple photographs at different exposure levels and combining them to produce one photo representative of a broader tonal range. This means that in the final photo we will have the optimal exposure of dark and bright spots respectively combined (which initially comes from a different photo). This is especially useful for indoor panoramas where you have windows or lamps.

HDR is a great feature to enhance your panoramas and virtual tours. Precisely because it is a feature that really can make a difference in panoramas, we here at 3DVista took it one step further and developed Adaptive HDR. For more information on 3DVista’s unique adaptive HDR technology, please click here or watch the tutorial on "What is the difference between normal HDR and the new 3DVista Adaptive HDR?".

HDR generally is a great feature to enhance your panoramas and virtual tours. Nonetheless, some people think that HDR photos seem a little too artificial and unreal. EXAMPLE PHOTO
This is why we here at 3DVista developed a technology that takes advantage of the benefits of HDR while making the panoramas look more natural and real. Adaptive HDR is a feature that is exclusive to 3DVista technology that you won’t find in any other software.
We were inspired by the behavior of the actual human eye whenever it has to deal with these very dark and very bright spots in real life. What the human eye does is it adapts to light and dark dynamically by adjusting the iris depending on the area your eye focuses on. With 3DVista’s adaptive HDR, we are mimicking this natural behavior thereby letting you add an extra element of reality to your virtual tours. So what adaptive HDR does is that rather than having the optimal exposure levels fixed in your panoramas, it dynamically adjusts them depending on where you are looking in real time. It lets you experience how exposure and luminosity adapt in every area of the panorama just as the human iris would, letting you see places the way they actually look in reality.
In order to take advantage of this unique feature you will need 3DVista Virtual Tour Pro.

Sometimes one panorama is not enough to capture the spirit of a place or to show developments and changes over time. 3DVista Live Panorama Technology lets you combine several panoramas of the same scenery taken at different times to create a time-lapse 360° interactive Show. Modifying the different parameters, you can take full control of how and when the different panoramas merge. In order to create such a Live Panorama you need to take the photos for the panorama several times throughout the desired time-frame (for example an entire day to show sunrise until sunset). Then you stitch these photos with 3DVista Stitcher in the mode Live Panorama. In order to visualize and publish your Live Panorama you will need 3DVista Virtual Tour Pro, which gives you the necessary viewer.

No, you can’t. Both features have been developed and optimized by 3DVista and are therefore unique to 3DVista software.

A virtual tour lets you see a place on screen in a way that is most similar to actually experiencing it in real life. Virtual Tours can generally contain many different types of media and tools, such as photos, panoramas, videos and audio. While others might already consider a single photo slideshow or video a virtual tour, we consider a virtual tour to be based on a panorama with interactivity options. In our FAQs and tutorials we will therefore speak of a virtual tour whenever it incorporates panoramas and interactivity, while the term presentations refers to mere slideshows or videos.

Technically, a virtual tour is the transformation of a flat panorama image into a spherical format. The virtual tour allows the viewer to walk virtually through your scenery using his computer, TV or mobile phone. Within this virtual tour you can show panoramas, videos, photos, floor plans or maps and you can play different sounds depending on where your viewer looks (immersive audio). A special virtual tour format lets you see a section of the captured zone on your screen (like you would actually see it if you were looking in one direction) and you can tell the viewer to turn left, right, up or down, like you would do with your head.

This is the basic of what a virtual tour is. Of course you can do much more with these tours. You can actually walk virtually through a building by adding various panoramas that are interlinked, you can include additional info texts, interactive hotspots, special effects such as lens flare and even widgets. You can also choose to have your tour be auto-piloted, which means your user won’t have to interact but will rather be guided through the scenery as if it were a video (which he can always interrupt and start piloting himself).

How can you create a virtual tour and show it on your website? For a virtual tour you need a flat panorama, and for a flat panorama you need several photos that are merged to achieve a wide-angle image. Therefore, you start by taking various photos of the scenery you want to show. Then, you import these photos into 3DVista Stitcher and let the program stitch them together automatically. Lastly, you import the created panorama into 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite and - with just one click - transform the panorama into an immersive and spherical format. After that, your virtual tour is technically ready for being uploaded onto your website. You can of course edit or add extras to your virtual tour before uploading it. You can enhance the image, set paths to show a set of points of interest in a certain order and edit auto-play, rotation and other settings or add extras, such as hotspots or audio to make your tour more attractive. Preview your virtual tour instantly or upload it to where you want it.

The only basics that you need to create a virtual tour are:

• a camera (or even only a mobile phone),
• a computer
• and 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite software

Even though before creating the actual virtual tour, you will need to create a panorama, you will not need to buy 3DVista Stitcher separately because it is already included in Virtual Tour Suite software. Besides these three basic ingredients, there are some further hardware gears that can help you in taking panoramic photos and will improve your results:

• A tripod – which gives you stabilization so that you’re not moving too much while shooting the different angles (more accurate stitching results)
• Certain special lenses can help you minimize the number of shots necessary for a panorama. While really any camera will do and is compatible with 3DVista software, there are special lenses that can improve the quality of your panoramas and virtual tours remarkably.
  • A wide angle lens, for example, has a bigger field of view than standard 35mm lenses, which means you will need less shots to create a panorama and therefore less pictures to process in the Stitcher. This will make the stitching process considerably faster and more precise.
  • A fisheye lens has an extraordinarily wide field of view. An image taken with a fisheye lens can be equivalent to four images taken with a standard lens, meaning that you will need even less shots to create a panorama. There are three different types of images depending on the type of the fisheye lens: Rectangular fisheye lenses, semi-circular and circular fisheye lenses which all vary in the level of vignetting they have. We recommend rectangular or alternatively semi-circular fisheye lenses for shooting panoramas.
• A panohead -that will (1) keep the camera in the center of the tripod to avoid changes in perspective between your individual shots and (2) automatically help you maintain the exact right angles between shots so that you don’t have to worry about sufficient overlap anymore. This is a must when using fisheye lenses.

The additional hardware refers to the optimization of the photographic process, which is why the same suggestions appear in the FAQ equipment section for panoramas. The only extra step you have to take for creating a virtual tour is the conversion of the flat panorama into a spherical format. For this you only need 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite once you have a readily stitched panorama. The above therefore explains the equipment suggested for the whole process of creating a virtual tour, which includes the photographic process for the creation of a panorama.

Generally, you can always just try things out with the program - There is nothing that you can do wrong so feel free to play around with effects and tools. With our preview tool you can see right away the changes that you made and whether you like them or not.

Step 1: Take photos of the place you want to show in your virtual tour. Unlike other software suppliers, 3DVista also allows you to create virtual tours with just partial panoramas, which means you will not have to take photos of the whole 360° scenery but you can also have a tour that covers a smaller angle.
There are a couple of things that you should remember when taking the photos

• You can use any camera and any lens for taking the photos. Nonetheless, there is some equipment that facilitates the process. Click here for more info or watch our video tutorial on "What equipment do I need to make a panorama".
• Especially when using fisheye or wide angle lenses you have to use a tripod with a panohead mounted on top.
• The individual photos should overlap by approximately 20%, which means that those photos that are next to each other in the panorama need to overlap by 20%. This overlap area is necessary, because it is where the program finds common control points between the two photos, which are used to stitch them. This is where the panohead comes into play because it will only let you rotate the camera up to the optimum point, making sure that you always maintain the right distance between the photos.
  • With a point and shoot camera or cell phone: Place your camera in portrait or vertical mode (in order to have a wider vertical field of view), keep your arms close to your body and start spinning clockwise around your own axis while you take several pictures. Again, it is important that the individual photos will have an area of overlap of approximately 20%.
  • With a DSLR camera and tripod: If you’re using a tripod, things will get a lot easier, quicker and more accurate. Set up the tripod with attached camera in the best viewing spot (usually the middle of the room). Use the bubble indicators on your tripod to ensure that your camera is level from front to back and side to side. Set the camera in portrait position and start taking several photos by rotating the head of the tripod. Remember to maintain a 20% overlap between shots.
  • With a DSLR camera, a tripod and a panohead: Set up the tripod in the best viewing spot (usually the middle of the room). Mound the panohead on top of the tripod and attach the camera to the panohead making sure that the end of the lens is vertically right above the rotation axis. It is absolutely crucial that the lens of the camera and not the body be right on top of the rotation axis to avoid changes in perspective when rotating the panohead. Rotate the panohead right until you feel it click into place and take a photo. For a full panorama take one final photo of the ceiling and optionally a photo of the floor (without the tripod).

Once you have the pictures taken, the process of creating the panoramas and the virtual tour starts. To learn how this is done, please take a look to our Quick Guide, where we describe this process in detail. LINK TO QUICK GUIDE

Yes. You can do this in several ways:

1. Create a spherical panorama from within 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite using any kind of camera and lens and publish it. Nonetheless, we highly recommend the use of wide angle lenses or fisheye lenses for this task.
2. Create a cubic panorama by assembling 6 faces of a 'cube' created in CAD programs or with special photo techniques
3. Import a readily-stitched 360°x360° panorama that has already been created in another stitching program into 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite

Yes. Thanks to our technology, which automatically adapts to the device, system and browser used by your clients, you don’t have to worry about displaying problems at all. Your Virtual Tours will be visible on Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, iPad and on every Browser Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer etc.

Yes, you can. When creating a virtual tour, you can even define minimum and maximum values of zoom allowed for the viewers of your tours. Auto-pilot navigation also includes zoom options.

3DVista Virtual Tour Suite allows you to change pretty much everything – from speed and quality, over size and layout to duration of the tours. If you’re an advanced user you can even control a lot of parameters from outside the tour using javascript.

Panoramas, photos and images in:

• JPG/JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg)
• PNG (.png) (supports transparency for skins and interface elements)
• BMP (.bmp)
• TIFF (.tiff)
• GIF (.gif)

• Live Panoramas (.zip)
• Adaptive HDR (.hdr)

• mpg (.MP4)
• ogg (.OGV)
• mkv (.MKV)
• wmv (.WMV)

You can have your virtual tour published in 2 formats:

• For uploading to the web
• As an Autoexecutable that runs in your local hard drive

Yes, you can. You can create different albums and alternate them with panoramas or other media.

The tripod cap is an image that is placed at the bottom of the viewer to cover the tripod. It often is used to place information or advertising of the photographer or the company (logos etc.).

The lens-flare effect is a special effect that you can add to your panoramas that imitates the artifacts that appear whenever you point your camera towards a powerful source of light. It is a natural phenomenon that will add a dramatic touch to your virtual tours.

Immersive audio is a technology that makes your virtual tours even more realistic by mimicking yet another human sense - (spatial) hearing. Immersive audio allows you to play different sounds depending on where the viewer is looking at. Imagine you have a beach scenery with forest behind you. Whenever the visitor looks at the sea, he or she would hear sounds of waves, while hearing birds chirping and leaves rustling when turning around and looking at the forest area. Click here to see the sample.

Yes, you can. Besides adding specific audio to specific media elements, you can also have a common background audio that plays during the whole virtual tour. You could, for example, add your favourite soundtrack or ambience music.

When publishing your virtual tour, you can choose between different formats and versions that you wish to export. By selecting the mobile version option, the panoramas will be optimized to run on mobile devices. The downloading times for this version will be shorter while maintaining an optimum quality level for mobile devices. Since you will be creating two versions (web and mobile), you will need more space on your hard drive or server for storing the virtual tour. Still, it usually makes sense to create both versions (web and mobile) in order to make sure that clients entering with mobile devices are saving time and bandwidth.

Yes. We included a spectacular feature called "Control by Giroscope" that allows you to move around a panorama only by moving your phone or tablet. This is a fantastic tool if you want to see something on location because it lets you see the real world while checking a virtual reality. Show modifications of a scene, such as pre- and post changes, day and night scenes, enhancement or the history of a place with antique drafts. Click here to see a sample.

No, we do not set a limit to media uploads and inclusion. However, remember that virtual tours containing a lot of media might not run as smoothly on some devices (especially mobiles or tablets with little RAM memory )

To set a starting point, import a panorama, double click on it, click on "Start", maneuvre the scene to the point of view that you wish to set and click on "Set as Initial View" . This will be the starting point of the panorama.

You can now have one and the same virtual tour start at different points or media, depending on its exact URL. This allows you to send a link that alters the initial media from the one you determined in the tour's playlist to the one you determine there and then in the URL. This way, you can send different links (with different start points) to different people or incorporate shortcut buttons on your website - one that'll start the tour with an intro video, one that'll start right in the master bedroom and one that'll take you straight to the kitchen panorama. And the best thing is you only have to create and host one single virtual tour.
There are two ways to alter the initial media by means of its URL:

• A) Take the standard URL of your tour and add a parameter called "media-index", followed by a number between 1 and N (N being the total number of media elements included in your tour). 1 would have the tour start at the first media element of your playlist, N would be the last. You can find the order of your media elements in the "Publish" tab under "Playlist".
• B) Take the standard URL of your tour and add a parameter called "media-name", followed by the name of the media you want to start with (the name you gave that media inside VT PRO). Keep in mind that a URL does not support special characters, such as accents, umlauts etc. If your media name includes a non-supported character, you need to include an encode as well: E.g. Media name: "Martín", URL add-on: "Mart%C3%ADn". For this, use a website, such as https://www.urlencoder.org

You need to download one of the browsers compatible with WebVR. We recommend Firefox or Chromium (the latter is the experimental version of Chrome). Chrome, too, will be supporting it natively in a few weeks. You can download them here: (It is important you follow the directions that appear there.)

A hotspot is an interactive area within a panorama. By clicking on it, your users can trigger a behavior, such as moving to another panorama, playing a video, showing a photo, displaying information, listening to an audio, entering a website or showing and hiding elements of the interface - depending on what action you as the author assigned to the respective hotspot. When creating your virtual tour you can add as many hotspots as you want and assign any of the aforementioned functions.

You can add five different types of hotspots:

1. A polygon, whose geometric shape you can draw freely. The entire chosen shape will be an active area on the panorama that will trigger an action when clicked on.
2. A Projected Polygon, which will adapt to the projection & deformation of the 360º scenery.
3. Interactive text, which could act as information signs (i.e. EXIT) and where the text itself is the clickable area.
4. An image, icon or animated GIF to represent the hotspot area itself. You can choose from our extensive icon library or import your own images
5. A Video Hotspot, which allows you to integrate a piece of video into your panorama. This is used for Animated Panoramas, where, when clicking on the hotspot area the video will start playing and thus the area begins to "come to life".

An info window is a certain type of hotspot that pops up and displays extra info to your customers when clicked on (or rolled-over). The info window can contain text and/or media, such as videos or images. It is ideal to give extra details about a certain point or object within your panorama. Integrate an info window by creating a hotspot on your panorama and selecting the "info-window" option. You can customize the information window by changing colors, size, font, transparency etc.

A tool tip is a short descriptive text that you can assign to some points of a panorama. A tool tip appears when the user rolls over an area, therefore it is quick and effective, yet not too intrusive. It is the perfect tool for brief info that you might want to give your audience, such as what an element in the panorama is. To integrate a tool tip you create a hotspot and select ‘tool tip’ as the action to perform.

The interactive video feature is a unique and spectacular trait of 3DVista software. It allows the author to trigger actions in certain points of a video. This gives you a new level of interactivity by allowing you to show thumbnails of places to visit in 360° whenever they appear in the video or display links to online shops for things appearing in the video. No more flat, lineal videos - welcome to interactive movies.

Yes, you can create photo albums, which can include effects such as ken burns. Your photo albums can either be a virtual tour by themselves or be combined with immersive panoramas and videos. You can define the level of fade, duration, panning and zooming for your slideshow.

Yes, you can add as many floor plans as you want to your virtual tour. Import a floor plan created with any CAD program and add interactive areas to it if you wish. These interactive areas function like hotspots, but instead of placing them on the panoramas, you place them on the floor plan. By clicking on these interactive areas, your users enter the respective area, similar to taking a shortcut. Thanks to the radar-effect, users can see at all times where they are ‘standing’ (i.e. which part of the scenery they are currently seeing) and in which direction they are looking. This way, your floor plans are interlinked with the virtual tour and help your users orientate. Your users will be able to rotate the floor plan and zoom in or out.

The floor plan’s radar-effect refers to the indication of the visitor’s current location as well as direction and field of view within a panorama. By enabling this function, your user will be able to see on the floor plan at all times in which part of the scenery he is, in which direction he is looking and which field of view is covered on his screen.

Yes. In order to do so go to the path tab and define the waypoints that you want your guided visit to have. Add actions to these waypoints if you want them to be interactive. You can add the exact same actions as to a regular hotspot (show pictures, play music, play video, open URL, display info, tool tip etc.).

This is a very useful tool for authors of a virtual tour. Imagine you want to display a text when your viewers enter a panorama, hide a toolbar when they enter certain media, display some information whenever your viewers reach a certain point of a video etc. You can show and hide elements previously created in the skin workshop by selecting the show and hide action in the behavior list.

Skin is the term used for the graphic interface that contains the virtual tour elements. It is usually made up of a graphic frame, the viewer where the media is played and optionally different button icons such as zoom -in, zoom-out, info/help, audio mute, and a media list. Skins can have many different designs and come in a large variety of forms and colors. You can change the skins of your tours in two ways:

1. by selecting a different Skin from the Skin library. We have an extensive and constantly growing library of skin designs that you can always download and integrate retrospectively.
2. by designing and creating your own skins with 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite, which includes a powerful skin design and editing tool with a broad range of creation tools and design options.

Yes, you can. By default, the skins that you have created will adapt dynamically to the size of your client’s browser - independently of whether he or she uses a desktop, a tablet or a mobile. Within this option, you can decide how the individual elements of the skin (e.g. thumbnail list) will adapt to this change in size - for instance they can stretch and grow with the canvas or they can keep fixed sizes. Alternatively, you might wish to set a fix size for both skin and virtual tour to make sure that users will see your tour always in the exact same way and no matter what device they are using. This is specially useful if you plan to embed your virtual tour in a spot inside a existing webpage, where the size is fixed.

Yes, you can. If you need a specific size for your virtual tour, for instance if you wish to embed it into an existing webpage or space online, you can define your skin’s size so that it won’t stretch, no matter how big your client’s browser is. This is perfect for fixed designs or layouts that need to follow some rules or requirements to fit your corporate design.

The viewer element is the window in which the media of a virtual tour will be shown and played. It is the space where your spherical panorama , videos and photos will be shown. Every skin needs to have one viewer.

The ‘panel’ element is a helpful tool that helps you design your own skins faster and more accurately. It works as a container, which can include many different skin elements grouped together. The ‘panel’ itself is a transparent rectangle where you can place the skin elements that you wish to combine. Instead of editing and placing each element separately, the container allows you to assign position, layout and behavior to the entire group at once. You could for example create a set of buttons and place them all together following this rule: Place panel always 40 pixels away from the bottom of the skin and make it cover 33% of the horizontal size of the skin (so it would grow and shrink as a unit). See tutorials.

Yes, you can create your own buttons. A button can consist of text or graphic. Each button can have up to four different states (normal, roll-over, pressed and inactive), which should be presented by different images in case you want your buttons to be graphical. When creating a button you will therefore be asked to select the kind of behavior (play, stop, mute, previous,next, show/hide panel etc.) and - in case you selected a graphic button - the four images for each button’s state. See tutorial.

The ‘thumbnail list’ is a shortcut to access the different media of the virtual tour. Instead of having to wait for one media to pass in order to see the next one, your users can therefore jump right to the media of their choice. The thumbnail list is customizable and you can decide if a list includes all media, only panoramas, only photos, only videos or custom media picked by you. Floor plans are excluded of the media list since they have their own window. A thumbnail list can consist of thumbnails (little images), title texts or both.

The drop-down menu is a special version of a thumbnail list. When activated, it displays (drops down) a list of media, from which the user may select one. This is convenient if you need clean skins and don’t want to have a lot of space occupied by displaying all thumbnails simultaneously.

The text or label element is not an element that your tour’s user interacts with. Instead, it allows you to place floating text to your skin (on top of the viewer) for informational or advertising purposes. Combined with panels that can be shown or hidden when entering and exiting media, the text element makes a powerful and magazine-like tool.

Yes, you can enrich your skin by adding .jpj or .png (transparency supported) files. Just place the image on the skin or within a panel if you wish to define how it adapts to the skin. The image will cover a part of the viewer. This is perfect for placing a logo or creating an artistic skin.

The tab element is a panel that shows different elements depending on which tab you select. The container panel has tabs on the top with customizable titles. The appearance of each tab is also customizable in color, size, font etc. This is very useful if you wish to have different thumbnail lists divided by type of media, for instance. In each tab you could group one type of media (panoramas, videos, photos).

Floor plans are displayed in their own window. You need to add the floor plan element from within the skin workshop in order to be able to import floor plan images into a virtual tour later. This floor plan window may have sub-elements, such as ‘zoom in/out’, ‘rotation’, and ‘list of floor plans’.

Any element within your skin can be located on the canvas either in absolute or in relative terms. This will define how an element will behave when the size of a tour is bigger or smaller (depending on screen resolution and device of your clients). When choosing to place elements in pixel units, the size and relation will be fixed - no matter how big or small the screen is. When choosing to place elements in percentage units, the elements will grow and arrange relative or according to the size of the virtual tour canvas.

Of course. When using our internal Hosting service, you will get a link upon hitting "Publish" that you can post and share on any platform. Alternatively, you can upload the tour to your own hosting service and embed the URL as you are used to.

This may have to do with the settings of your .apng file export. If you use a program such as APNG Assembler, the options "Optimize palette" and "Optimize color type" may be selected by default in the compression settings. Deselect the option "Optimize Color Type" for 3Dvista to be able to recognize the compression type of the file.

You can publish your virtual tour on your or your company’s website in order to improve your online appearance. Getting customers to interact with your virtual tour will give you a competitive advantage because it gets the user engaged. You can use the virtual tour as a new webpage (solely showing the tour) or as part of an existing one (integrate the virtual tour into for example the product description page of a house that you are offering).

Note that in order for your tour to be seen by your audience, it is not necessary to have a special player or software. So as soon as your virtual tour is published online, it can be seen by anyone.

But how DO you publish or upload your virtual tour exactly? Once you are done creating or editing your virtual tour you will have to get it from within the program to the internet for people to see. Of course, you can upload it to your own server. But if you are struggling with uploading processes or and FTP programs we also have a solution for you. We have included our own hosting service, which lets you upload your virtual tours to the internet with just one click. You’ll get a link that you can share on the internet or send right away to friend or customers.

‘3DVista Hosting’ is an optional, yet valuable service that allows you to have your tours online in seconds without the need for technical skills. Our hosting service is the perfect solution for those with little or no knowledge about FTPs or servers or for those who simply want to get around the technical hassles of web hosting but still want to show their tours on their website. With just one click, you will have your virtual tours online and ready for people to see – without having to worry about how and where to save it. 3DVista will charge you an annual fee for this service.

You can access your control panel from here.

You can export your virtual tours in two different formats

1. For the web (online)
   If you choose this format, the program will export various files and folders (see list), which is why you should first create your own new folder (e.g. "My first virtual tour") to store them in. All these exported files and folders need to be uploaded to an ftp or hosting service in order to be played online. The typical structure of files and folders that you will export from 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite consists of:
   • index.htm (the file that needs to be opened from the browser)
   • script.js
   • Media (folder where all the media files are stored)
   • Lib (folder with accessory elements)
   
   IMPORTANT: You need to upload ALL these files and folders respecting their relative path in order to have your virtual tours working. This means, you cannot, for instance, move the "index.htm" file inside the "media folder".
2. As an Autoexecutable that runs on a local hard drive. (offline):
   The autoexecutable format consists of one single file (.EXEfor PC & .Dmg for Mac) that can be emailed or stored in services like Dropbox or the kind for fast and easy sharing. It doesn´t need of a connection to run once they have been download in a computer.
   The exe or dmg file consists of one single file that includes everything and can be downloaded to be run locally. Depending on whether you want to have your tour online for anyone to see or sent it to individuals for them to run it locally, you choose one or the other.

Of course. When using our internal Hosting service, you will get a link upon hitting "Publish" that you can post and share on any platform. Alternatively, you can upload the tour to your own hosting service and embed the URL as you are used to.

You can create a new webpage with only your virtual tour or you can integrate the virtual tour into an existing webpage (for example integrated into the info page of a certain real estate object). Your virtual tours can then be seen by visitors of your page just like that - without having to download any additional software or special players. However, a virtual tour is not a video so you cannot post it on YouTube (unless you take a video of your tour and post the video itself).

The Exe tour is a 'self-executable program'. This means that the virtual tour is self-contained within a single file, which you can save and then attach to an email as you would do with any other kind of email attachment or upload to Dropbox or preferred storing platform. This is a great way to get users to see your tours by just downloading one single file. It can contain all your panoramas as well as slide shows, videos clips, interactive floor plans and audio tracks.

The size of a virtual tour will change with the number of multimedia elements (panoramas, photos, videos, audio etc.) employed. 3DVista Virtual Tour Suite automatically creates your final tour in an optimum size that guarantees high quality while minimizing file size to have it load quickly. However, depending on your personal preferences or the intensity you wish for your virtual tour (more quality vs. faster loading), you can manually modify the settings of the exporting process for each media (size, quality, choose if you want to have a mobile version or a preload version etc.).

The information in your facebook posts does not adapt automatically. You have to help facebook understand that there was a change in the source: Therefore, go to the following link https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ , insert the URL of your tour and click on "Debug". Then click on "Scrape again" - that's it.

First, make sure that the video has been correctly uploaded via your FTP server (the upload process may have stopped or failed). If the uploading process was not the issue, check whether the required MIME types are included in your server (these are required to serve adaptive video). If you do not see the following extensions, add them:
- extension: .m3u8 MIME type: application/x-mpegURL
- extension: .ts MIME type: video/MP2T

This is a known issue with Mac and its Gatekeeper system. If you download a non-trusted application, Mac will change the permissions to execute that app, saying it is damaged. There are three ways to circumvent this issue:
Instead of double-clicking on the standalone file to run, right-click on it and choose "open". This will bypass security, allowing the user to run unsigned applications. The right-click procedure is only necessary the first time that the file is opened. Afterwards, double-clicking will run the tour without problems every time.
Your second option is to send the file through a USB, as the problem only occurs when the user downloads the file in Safari (or any browser, because Safari is the engine for all browsers in the Mac system).
Read here how you can bypass this Mac restriction: https://www.larrytalkstech.com/fix-os-x-damaged-applications-warnings-from-gatekeeper/
The best solution would be to sign the .app file in your system with a valid certificate and then compress that file again. Your users then won't have any problems when downloading the tour executable.

Yes. Publishing to Google Street View is a great way to extend your marketing so you and your business can reach an even bigger audience. When searching for your business on Google, your customers will see the 360º imagery that the photographer captured and will be able to virtually visit your business.

Google Street View is public and 360ºs uploaded to it are visible to anyone and everyone. Therefore, Google does not allow for private homes (residential real estate) to be published to Google Street View. Nightly rentals are allowed. The following categories are admitted to GSV:

• Business Listings — retail, bars and restaurants
• Places of Interest — museums and landmarks
• Multifamily — apartment complexes
• Travel and Hospitality — hotels and resorts
• Vacation & Short Term Rentals — nightly rentals only
• Commercial Real Estate — office spaces