The Virtual Tour Maker

Over the weekend Map Channels sent me a link to a new virtual tour of Bagnoles de L'Orne in Normandy, France. Bagnoles de L'Orne is a beautiful spa town set beside a pretty lake and the Andaines Forest. The Map Channels virtual tour takes you on a guided Street View walk around some of Bagnoles de L'Orne's most picturesque locations.

The Bagnoles de L'Orne virtual tour was made with Map Channels' new Tour Maps virtual tour wizard. With Tour Maps you can quickly create your own Street View tours around any location. Creating a tour is very easy and just requires you to create a route on an interactive map. You can easily add and edit places of interest on your route. Once you have created your route using the map wizard you can then view an animated tour of your route and share your map with friends and family. 

Your completed Map Tour includes a synchronized map and Street View tour, with step-by-step directions of the tour in the map side-panel. Viewers of your completed virtual tour can simply press the map's play button to automatically progress through your planned route. The tour map includes speed controls so that users can increase or decrease the play-back speed of the tour. Users can also use the step-by-step directions in the side-bar to navigate directly to specific stages on the virtual tour. 

Each Street View panorama on your tour will auto-rotate to provide a panoramic view of a location when the user pauses on an individual stage of the tour. If users follow your tour on a mobile device they can also turn on geolocation to actually follow their on the ground progress with the mapped virtual tour.