What a tour is
What you already have, and what it is not.
Many businesses own 360° images. Almost always lone photospheres. This page says how to recognise them, and what sets them apart from a route.
A photosphere, alone in its corner.
A photosphere is a single image, taken from one spot and closed in on itself. You spin it around, you look at the ceiling and the floor, you go nowhere. It is what most businesses own when they tell us they already have 360°.
It has its use. It shows a room at a glance, and it takes seconds to capture. But it links nothing to anything.
A route links viewpoints together.
A sequence is a series of viewpoints linked to each other and placed on the map. You move from one point to the next, you turn at a junction, you go through a door and come out wherever you like. Each point knows its position and its neighbours.
That link is what makes the route. Without it there are only images set side by side, and the visitor stays put.
Why one does not replace the other.
You cannot move around
In front of a photosphere you see what the camera saw, from the exact spot where it stood. Nothing else. In a route, the visitor picks where to go, and goes there.
You do not know where you are
A lone image is not located. A sequence is geo-referenced: every viewpoint carries its coordinates, the map knows where to put it, and you can reach it from the map rather than from a link.
Joins cannot be fixed afterwards
Two images taken separately, even in the same spot, do not assemble into a route. Moving from one point to the next is settled while filming, never in the edit.
What a tour does not do.
It does not measure. It is neither a plan, nor a technical survey, nor a three-dimensional model: distances are seen there, not computed.
It does not update itself. What moves in the place does not move in the images, and a fresh shoot is organised like the first one.
And it settles nothing on your behalf. We promise no effect. It puts the place on view. What a visitor makes of that is not ours.
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