Digital Twin vs Virtual Tour: What a Measured 3D Capture Adds

A 360 virtual tour lets a buyer look around each room from the spots where the camera stood, while a digital twin also measures the house, so the same visit gives the layout and a way to walk through it. In a Giraffe360 camera capture, the measurement is what turns the 360 tour into a 3D virtual tour, opened in three ways: the tour itself, the 3D floor plan and the 3D Walkthrough.

What a 360 Tour Shows, and What Measurement Adds

A virtual tour is a set of panoramas joined so that a visitor can explore the property. The buyer drags a panorama to look around and selects a navigation point to move to the next one. Every view is a photograph, and a photograph holds no distances. It shows what a room looks like from one spot, but not how big the room is or where it sits in the house.

In real estate, a digital twin is a capture that records both the pictures of a home and its measurements. The Giraffe360 camera combines HDR image capture, 360 capture and LiDAR measurement data in one device. LiDAR is a sensor that measures distance using light, 1.5 million points per scan by the camera's specification, and those measured points together make the property's point cloud. The panoramas and the points come from the same scans on one visit, and the project they create holds all three views. The tour is still the first of them, and the plan seen from above and the walk through the rooms are what the measurement adds.

Standing in the Room With the Virtual Tour

The virtual tour is built from HDR panoramas. In a tour with 3D navigation, the keyboard moves the buyer through the house: Up Arrow or W goes towards the next reachable view and Down Arrow or S goes back. Without it, the same keys tilt the view up and down, and the buyer changes view with the navigation points, the room list or the floor controls.

The tour's information panel lists the property's areas, and the m / ft switch at the bottom changes the units they are shown in, never the measured size. Even so, the tour shows the house one panorama at a time, and the buyer has to work out from them how the rooms fit together.

Seeing the House From Above in the 3D Floor Plan

The 3D floor plan shows how they fit, from the same capture. On its shared link, a buyer selects Explore, then 3D for the perspective view or 2D for the plan view, and uses Select a room or the floor selector to focus on one part of the property. In the editor's Settings, Display furniture and Display measurements decide whether the plan shows furniture and dimensions.

Under Layers, Displayed layers turns 2D view, 3D view and Sun path on or off, and Default layer picks the one visitors see first. At least one layer stays on. Sun path, once the project's sun path data has been generated, shows how sunlight moves through the house on the day it was captured.

The plan also leads back into the tour. With 3D view on, setting Virtual tour integration to Regular places tour pins on the plan, so a buyer can open the tour from it. Gated uses the tour's gated link where it is available, and Do not display hides the pins. The project needs a delivered virtual tour for this, as the setting doesn't create one. The plan is shared from its own card, as a regular link or a Listing site friendly one without branding, contact information or links, and the Help Centre's 3D floor plan article covers embedding it in a website.

Walking Through the House in the 3D Walkthrough

The 3D Walkthrough takes the buyer off the fixed spots. They press and drag to look around and click or tap where they want to walk, or use W, A, S and D with the mouse on a keyboard, pressing Escape to release the mouse. Door and stairs markers offer Go outside, Go inside, Go up the stairs and Go down the stairs, and the map, building and floor controls lead to the rest of the property. Visitors need no Dashboard account.

A walkthrough link may first show a data-download warning with its size, and other floors download as the buyer enters them. Movement stays within the content delivered with the project: a doorway that appears in the house isn't always one the buyer can walk through.

On the project, the 3D Walkthrough card appears when the feature is available and a walkthrough has been delivered. Its Links menu offers a Regular version with branding and a Listing site version without it. Each has to be Published before its link works for visitors, and Collect cookies is a choice only on the Regular version. The share icon adds social sharing and Download QR.