Hi Danny,

autopano is to create a pano image and you can render & save this pano in image formats like jpg, tiff, kro, exr, png, psd, psb. now you've a flat file on your computer harddisc.
to create a virtual tour you need seperate software. panotour is from kolor, there are others too like ptgui. krpano is another one very interesting, because panotour itself is based on it and with panotour 2.0 it will be the official GUI for krpano. if you buy autopano giga, than a krpano license is included and if you buy now krpano seperately and you later decide to buy panotour, you will get an discount (100€ I think if I remember correct).

CORRECT'ION:
1. the krpano license is included in panotour pro and not autopano giga... and ptgui
2. ptgui is a stitching tool, like Andrew did mention: Pano2VR can create tours...

differences between autopano and autopano giga:
http://www.kolor.com/autopano-pro-giga-comparison.html
(the more HDR options and freedom, plugins like anti haze , workspace saving option etc. - I would recommend the giga (but that you finally have to decide by yourself if the more money its worth for you...)

differences between panotour and panotour pro:
http://www.kolor.com/panotour-panotour- … rison.html
here if you ever wanna do gigapixel panos or need to provide mobile device compatibility or you wanna manually edit the xml config files than the pro version is only possible way....
here panotour 2.0 will bring an huge change, step forward concerning HTML5/mobile devices compatibility....
the panotour preview you can se in the blog... its the second have of the slideshow:
http://www.kolor.com/blog-en/2012/07/05 … nce-ivrpa/

with panotour you can create a virtual tour. it will be saved on your harddisc and is a combination of html files, the swf file with the tour and many many many folders and subfolders containing cubic slices of your panos in many many many different resolutions. depending on the focal used more or less deep zooming into your panos will be possible (poanotour pro)

if you take now this complete folder with sometimes many thousands files and subfolders and upload this folder including all content to your webspace on the server of your ISP than the pano gets available via internet for others too. you cant create something like a movie from krpano nor panotour.

a good stable tripod is worth a lot. any shaking of your cam makes it hard to create panos...
panoheads: if you only want to to indoor panos with your fisheye than a manual head is preferable, easy to use and faster than a robotic head.
if you also wanna do higher resolution panos (>35/50mm) than I would tend to an robotic head like the panogear  - here your camera and lens should be discussed if it fits on the robotic head of your choice. The absolute must haves of any panohead: rock sturdy - non shaking, and your Camera & lens should be able to be places in the NPP - No Parallax Point / Nodal Point... many instructions can be found in this forum how to get this done...
the gigapan is also wide used. but hard or even inpossible to create 360x180 panos. very unusual is that the camera mounted in landscape mode... in general it has advantages to use portrait mode, because you've than less images to shoot between zenith and nadir ... I personal would prefer any Nodal Ninja manual head over a gigapan.... but again other may tell you the opposite with good arguments mabye too...

if you tend to do gigapixel panos: most important is experience, try & error, exercise and a non cheap robotic panohead, like Seitz VR Drive 2 or Panoneed or some others (all around 2.000,- Euroos up to >7000€)

the panogear/merlin head is far most cheapest robotic head... highres planar panos (non 360x180) with up to 300mm can be done (landscape with targets in the pano far away getting no parallax errors because unable to get the lens places in NPP ) the Seitz, the panoneed and the merlin does write the image positions of your pano to an xml file which can be imported by autopano giga and massivly help you creating panos (reducing time for placing images correctly; any stitching software has problems finding control points in neighbor images if the main part of the images have no details: sky, water, white walls etc.) so using a fisheye lens you dont need a xml file to save time positioning the single images, but if you use a 50mm lens and you've to sort 300 images of showing sky/water etc.... the xml file of such robotic panohead can save a lot of time here.)

in case of merlin/panogear: the TC handcontroller is the computer which does calculate the rows and colums on the fly for you and it does create and save the xml files I mentioned above. Instead of the TC handcontroller you can use a notebook and a bluetooth dongles to connect the merlin with the notebook. on the notebook you can run papywizzard. here you can also create templates and the software does gear the panohead and does write the xml file on the notebook...

Liebe Gruesse
Georg

Last edited by gkaefer (2012-12-15 20:27:28)

danbo wrote:

Once I have created a virtual tour, do I need some specialist web hosting?

No, any web hosting serviec will suffice.

I guess it could be exported as a movie and go on youtube but how do I give my web users an interactive virtual tour.

No, this is not possible.

I also just bought a Tokina 10-17mm F/3.5-4.5 AT-X 107 DX AF Fisheye lens (Canon Mount),  the plan is to take 4 or 5 shots and create a spherical tour.

You will at least 7-8 shots to cover 360x180 with this lens on a Canon APSC format camera.

I think I need to buy a good tripod and a panorama head,  I've been looking at Pano_MAXX 360-180 .  Is this a good idea and am I correct that I could not use it with my cheap HAMA 63 Star tripod (it cost me under £20)[

I would recommend a Nodal Ninja pano head over the PanoMAXX. A good robust tripod is needed. if your tripod meets that spec. then it will be OK.

You cannot really shoot 360x180 panos without a proper pano head.   Although I am aware that a few experts manage to do so using a Sigma 8mm f3.5  fisheye handheld.

Last edited by mediavets (2012-12-15 18:52:49)