CarolinaVR.com - The Finest Quality Virtual Reality Imaging in the South-Eastern United States

Welcome

Welcome to www.carolinavr.com, the online portfolio and virtual imaging resource for Chapel Hill based photographer, Tom Hurley.

CarolinaVR Logo This site will show you the potential of virtual reality images and the benefits they can offer your organization. This is the web based technology that everyone is using when they visit an area, either as a tourist or new resident. Here in the Triangle, an area that constantly attracts new professionals, you now have the opportunity to gain an advantage over your competition by showing your chosen locations at their best, no matter where in the world your prospective client is viewing them from.

Don't forget that you can contact Tom Hurley for more information at any time by clicking the contact tab above. Tom will be pleased to visit you at your facility and give you the best advice on what combination of regular and virtual reality imaging will be best for your needs.

Realtors

Do you want your prospective clients to see properties without ever leaving the comfort of their office or home? Think about the benefit of a visitor being able to see the inside of a property before they even arrive in town for viewings. You save their time, and yours.

Lots of realtors offer virtual tours but so often these have been prepared "on the fly" or using low quality photographic equipment. How often are you able to see all around you - not just left and right, but up and down too so you can check the carpets or floors, and also the ceiling, lighting fixtures or skylights.

An additional benefit is that you can offer the vendor a free gift on completion of the sale of their house: the virtual reality files so that they can keep them to remind them of the home that they have moved on from!

Consider the following options:

Files supplied in either Quicktime or Flash format - easy to embed into a webpage.
Panoramas discretely branded with your company logo - typically a circular image on the floor - so your panoramas cannot be used by any other realtors.
Have as few or as many panoramas as you want - you need just the kitchen and living area? No problem. Or cover every room in the house!
Panoramas delivered by CD in the mail or by direct download from the carolinavr website - typically within 24 hours or quicker if needed.
Panoramas can be used in your office to give guests an initial impression of a home that they may not otherwise consider.

Property Rentals, including Apartments and Holiday Cabins

Apartment Rentals

Simply put, property rentalss are competitive, especially in the Triangle area

RTP, Duke and UNC contribute to a strong apartment rental market with many new customers arriving from out of state or overseas.

How can you get new customers interested in your apartments before they even arrive in North Carolina? It's easy - you simply ensure that you have a high quality virtual reality tour that clearly demonstrates why your apartments are what they are looking for. You never need to leave your office or send expensive and slow mailings - all you do is point them to your website and ensure that your listing in any publications (for example Triangle Area Apartment Guide) states that you have virtual tours available online.

Don't forget that additional amenities such as a swimming pool or a gym help seal the deal so don't forget to include them too. A well prepared virtual tour will create the aspiration that your client base are seeking to find.

Holiday Cabins

The Carolinas are a superb vacation venue. From the Outer Banks to the mountains, there is scenery to suit all tastes.

If you are renting a cabin in any of these locations, you need to ensure that you or your rentals agent maintain a strong web presence. An essential element of this must be a virtual reality tour supported by some high quality still images as neccessary.

A virtual tour can show the following items:

Some or all of the rooms in the cabin
Special features (a deck, a garden, hot tub or pool)
Views from the property

Without a virtual tour, you could be losing customers who want to book with confidence, knowing in advance what they can expect from your cabin. With a virtual tour, your cabin is worth more per week, all for a simple, single investment in this powerful web marketing tool.

Developers

At all stages of a development, be it a single residence or a large commercial park, a virtual tour is a valuable tool at all levels.

Consider these factors:

You can record the condition of the site before any ground is broken - a perfect historical record for the future
The progress of construction can be monitored, both to show the separate stages of any works and to show the public the most up to date status of the build on your website
The virtual reality tour of the finished development can be incorporated into the sales web page and increase the marketing profile of the site.

Tourism, including Hotels, Museums and Retail

Visitors to any facility now want to know what they will get from their visit, be it a hotel, mall, a scenic walk or a museum.

Hotels now find that guest confidence is reinforced by a virtual tour. A tour of a standard room shows a guest what they can expect; a tour of the best suite shows them what the hotel is capable of. Appealing to the aspirations of a guest is an unbeatable strategy.

If you want your venue to be at the top of any "must do" list then allowing the public to explore a few of its highlights is essential. You want to give an indication of the class, ambiance and excitement of a visit to your location.

While you never want to give away so much that visitors feel that they no longer need to visit, you equally want to give them the taste that leaves them hungry for more.

A virtual reality tour can do this.

Finally, for museums and historic properties, you can use virtual tours as a means of showing guests rooms that are not accessible to them. One virtual reality tour could allow thousands of visitors to experience private rooms without ever intruding on privacy or causing wear and tear!

Government and Schools

Government and Municipalities

A virtual tour is a perfect way of attracting new and existing residents, as well as tourists, to your city and its facilities.

As municipalities become ever more accountable, residents want to know what facilities are on offer. This may be swimming pools, a gym, parks or public transit. You can help visitors overcome the myth that municipal facilities cannot match those of the private sector by allowing them to visit online. You can open the doors to amenities that they never knew existed, and above all, you can take them straight into the heart of where democracy takes place by giving web visitors an opportunity to stand in your council's chamber.

Put simply, there is no simpler means of demonstrating value for money and creating a welcoming, feature rich town for new and existing residents.

Schools

At every age range, from pre-K to post-graduate, attracting new students is essential. The quality and condition of your facilities are an indicator of the quality that a student can expect at your faculty.

With new families attracted to the Triangle, schools in both the private and public sector pre-K to 12 range have to work hard to compete. Provide an attractive school and it's a strong driver to relocate to that immediate area, plus which, many of the schools in the Triangle area boast class leading facilities including spacious auditoria, well equipped gyms and sustainable architecture.

Universities

The Triangle attracts under-graduates and post-graduates from all over the world, many of whom are attracted by the quality of facilities, accommodation and grounds, as well as the unsurpassed academic standards.

With more prospective students worldwide researching their chosen school online, it is important to ensure that the best facilities are shown using a web based medium that immerses them in the location. As the virtual reality tour becomes an expected online feature, you need to ensure that your university is represented to the highest standard.

Contact

You can contact carolinavr by email or by calling Tom Hurley on his cell phone or using Skype. You will be given a no-obligation quotation for the imagery that you are seeking and you can remain assured that you will be receiving the highest level of professionalism in the Carolinas.

Cell: 1 919 259 1053
E–Mail:

Examples

Note that these will all open in a new window as a popup when clicked.

The range of scenarios shows just how versatile these virtual reality images can be!

* - These files are only cylindrical panoramas, not spherical panoramas,so they cannot be tilted fully up towards the sky or down to the floor.

Tips

Producing reliable full 360° virtual reality content demands specialist cameras, lenses, tripods and software. While lots of companies can produce partial virtual reality tours, very few have the level of expertise and equipment that is provided by carolinavr. We won't be the cheapest, but we're confident that we'll be the best.

There are methods of preparing virtual tours that require only two or three images but these are often of poor quality and have visible joins that are distracting and spoil the illusion. carolinavr uses no less than ten images, and frequently more, to achieve a true 360° degree spherical image.

Will your tour being to slowly rotate once it has fully loaded? Having an image auto-rotate is a great way of letting the viewer know that this is not just a simple image but is a full virtual reality tour. As standard, the carolinavr images will automatically return to the horizon and continue to autorotate after a couple of seconds of inactivity too.

Not everyone knows how to control a virtual reality image. That's why buttons are provided on the Flash based tours if required. Want a different style of button or your logo above or beside the buttons? Just ask!

Make sure you know what you want your virtual reality tour to be used for: does it need to be very high resolution or relatively small; do you want it to run on a webpage amongst other content or as a pop-up; do you want it as a Flash file or a Quicktime file. Don't know the answers to these questions? Then talk to Tom Hurley - he'll assess the needs that you have and explain it to you in plain English.

Will other virtual tour providers give you both unlimited licence to use your virtual tour files, and give you the original image file too? We will, and you can download it all over the web allowing very rapid turnaround.

Do you know who may be using your virtual reality tour? It is possible for unscrupulous businesses to copy or link to your online tour. While this cyber-theft is difficult to prevent entirely, it can be discouraged by a range of means, for example placing your own company's logo on the "floor" or using a logo above the controller buttons (like we have done on this site). These methods makes it pretty apparent to viewers when a virtual reality tour has been taken without consent.

Will you be wanting to use the virtual reality tours both on- and off-line? If so, you need to be able to request a higher resolution tour specifically for this purpose. Though a high resolution tour would take too long to download for website use, it is perfect for use in an office environment or on a CD-ROM or Powerpoint presentation. carolinavr will not charge for this additional service.

Finally, are you are one of the many who have invested in 360° equipment and found it's just too complicated to use? It may simply need setting up correctly. As an expert in 360° software and hardware setup, why not book a half or one day tutorial with Tom Hurley? This will represent superb value for both private individuals and businesses alike.