Development and Evaluation of an Interactive 360° Virtual Tour for Tourist Destinations
Abstract
This paper describes the development and evaluation of a virtual tour prototype for tourist destinations. Four interesting destinations in Perlis, located in the northern region of Malaysia were selected. It allows the users to navigate and to listen to the background sounds and narration, as well as to read brief information about each place. Each panorama contains hotspots that enable the users to further explore the surroundings. All pictures were combined using photo stitching technique to produce panoramic images. The planar panorama was set as the panorama type. The first usability test was conducted to gain user feedbacks towards the virtual tour and to make refinement to the prototype. The second usability test was intended to measure its usability in terms of user satisfaction and effectiveness. The virtual tour received positive feedbacks and all participants agreed that it could attract tourists to visit the actual place.
Keywords: planar panoramaphoto-stitchingusability evaluationvirtual tourtourism
Introduction
Virtual reality (VR) is a three-dimensional multisensory, immersive, and interactive digital environment. A virtual tour possesses virtual reality elements: it is a virtual navigation of landscapes that exist in the real world, a simulation of an existing location composed of a sequence of video images or photographic panoramas. The virtual tour developed in this research consists of still images combined using a stitching technique to produce panoramic images of four destinations in Perlis — a snake farm, a recreational lake, a cave and a waterfall — among the most popular and mostly visited places by tourists to the state.
Related Work
Wu et al. (2005) defined three steps to realise a tour in an electric world: converting the real environment into electric models, stitching photographs into a virtual environment picture, and combining both steps with 3D models. Chen (1995) demonstrated a better technique consisting of a linking process between hotspots and compression steps for small file sizes and fast loading, described in five steps of panoramic movie making: node selection, stitching, hotspot marking, linking, and compression.
Methodology
The virtual tour prototype was developed using panoramic images produced by photo-stitching, with the planar panorama set as the panorama type. Each panorama contains hotspots enabling users to explore the surroundings, with background sounds and narration as well as brief information about each place. Two usability tests were conducted: the first to gather user feedback and refine the prototype, the second to measure usability in terms of user satisfaction and effectiveness.
Results and Conclusion
The virtual tour received positive feedback, and all participants agreed that it could attract tourists to visit the actual place. The prototype demonstrates that a lightweight, hotspot-linked planar panorama approach is a practical way to promote real-world tourist destinations online.
How to cite this paper
A. Osman, N. Abdul Wahab, and M. H. Ismail, "Development and Evaluation of an Interactive 360° Virtual Tour for Tourist Destinations," Journal of Information Technology Impact, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 173–182, 2009.