isticated 360 VT. These deliver additional function-
ality paying extra packages. Tools like kprano
(krpano, 2020), Matterport (Matterport, 2020) and
Roundme (Roundme, 2016) allow testing the func-
tionality through a temporary free trial package, how-
ever purchasing a license is required to be able to de-
velop and share a VT.
To our best knowledge, Marzipano
7
is the only
Open Source tool that allows the design, development
and customisation of VTs, although it requires pro-
gramming skills in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Mar-
zipano also provides demos which show the possible
functionality that can be developed by who are experi-
enced in JavaScript and Marzipano Tool. It is true that
forums like Quora (Quora, 2010) and Google Groups
(Google Groups, 2017) support experienced and non-
experienced users when encounter coding errors, for
example. However, these forums are used to answer
specific errors rather than providing detailed guidance
from start to end on your project. Given the capabil-
ity of Marzipano Tool, this work aims at proposing an
Open Source pipeline to develop and custom a low-
cost web-based VT with minimal coding experience
using Marzipano and a 360 camera.
There is work that describes the stages to develop
a 360-degrees experience, yet this work focused on
the usage of non Open Source software increasing
the overall costs of the approach. For example, these
works (Collier III et al., 2017; Wessels et al., 2014)
describe the phases to develop a 3D VT for cultural
heritage industry using different technology from 360
Cameras. These other work (Argyriou et al., 2020;
Ceulemans et al., 2018) propose a set of require-
ments and design considerations for 360 immersive
video. Although these guidelines are beneficial when
exploring the VTs capability, it does not assist non-
expert on the development of a VT. This work aims at
providing a software framework and full documenta-
tion to allow users to rapidly develop their VTs.
3 360 VIRTUAL TOUR PIPELINE
As mentioned before, there are many approcahes to
develop a low-cost web-based VT (Section 1) given
the software, image acquisition technology and deliv-
ery choice to share the VT, among others. The 360-
degrees VT pipeline proposed is designed for those
Organisations that are willing to:
1. Purchase a 360 Camera to capture 360 ima-
ges/videos.
2. Develop a Web-based application to share the VT.
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https://www.Marzipano.net/
3. Utilise Marzipano Open Source tool to develop
VT.
This work aims at proposing a methodology to as-
sist those Organisations, which accomplish the above
requirements, developing a low-cost web-based VT.
Being able to develop its own VT will allow Organisa-
tions to update it at any time at no extra cost and util-
ise the 360 camera for other activities like live stream-
ing an event in a 360-degrees experience. The 360-
degrees VT pipeline proposed consists of the follow-
ing phases (see Figure 4): Research, Planning, Design
and Development, Hosting and Feedback. The last
three phases are iterated until obtaining the desired
web-application.
3.1 Research
The only associated cost with the development of
the VT is the purchase of the camera. The camera
choice depends on the budget and specification re-
quired. Nowadays, there is a wide variety of 360
camera, which prices range between £250 - £45,000
(Ceulemans et al., 2018). Although there are low-
priced 360 cameras, it is important to consider the im-
age quality as a persuasion value. The higher-quality
content is shown in a 360-degrees experience, the bet-
ter telepresence is perceived by users in a virtual en-
vironment and therefore more persuasion.
Apart from checking the camera features, the fol-
lowing specifications will allow a better performance
during the image acquisition phase. Battery life and
charging time are two key specifications, especially
for those Organisations with large and spacious facil-
ities. A longer battery life will allow longer period
capturing images before charging the camera, which
could two times longer longer than the period captur-
ing 360 images.
There are camera extras that are highly recommended
to purchase to ease the development of a high-quality
VT. These are the tripods and monopods. There are
many options depending on the height, base size, ver-
satility to use it on different ground types (e.g. road,
grass, stairs), and image acquisition location (e.g. in-
doors, outdoors or windy outdoors locations). It is
important to consider that the smaller the tripod base
is, the better hidden the tripod will be in the 360 ima-
ges. Having the base of a 360 image covered by the
black frame of the tripod can be disturbing. The Im-
age Editing phase (Section 3.3.2) will cover some tips
how to negate this issue.
Rapid Development of a Low-cost Web-based 360 Virtual Tour
317