RICOH Tours Rebrands as RICOH360 Tours: Service Provider Tools Added12394
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 WGAN ForumFounder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user | |
 Screen Grab: RICOH360 Tours Website  Screen Grab: RICOH360 Tours Website Media Release --- RICOH Tours Announces Rebrand, New Product Offerings and Global Launch New Brand Reflects the Company's Commitment to Bring Speed, Features and Reach Together for Their Customers and Partners. CUPERTINO, Calif., July 1, 2020 (Newswire.com) - RICOH Tours, the industry’s only complete and affordable 360 virtual tour solution under one brand, today announced the company’s rebranding as RICOH360 Tours to further expand globally. Last year, RICOH Tours realized it was time to branch out and leverage its unique offering of both 360-degree cameras and virtual tour software into countries outside of North America. RICOH360 Tours is a cloud-based software service that allows anyone who has a RICOH THETA 360 camera and RICOH360 Tours mobile app to create a virtual tour easily without any special skills or expensive equipment in a matter of minutes, enabling facilities management and real estate agents to provide high-quality property viewings virtually, thereby enhancing their business productivity. There is a growing need to introduce real estate and other spaces online, and through the use of RICOH360 Tours, many entities have taken it upon themselves to create virtual tours. RICOH360 Tours' rebranding is not just about the name. In addition to the new visual identity, RICOH360 Tours has released new product features that allow its users to invite individuals to become members of a team. Teams are a great way to manage all of the properties under one agency in a central place. Team members have their own business card that is displayed in their tour and each team member will have their own profile photo. RICOH360 Tours also released both a manual and auto-cropping feature. With auto-cropping users have the ability to allow the RICOH360 Tours AI-based image processing technology to generate the best 2D stills automatically from every 360 image in a virtual tour ready for publishing to an MLS. These new features provide a great way for existing paid subscribers to experience the latest RICOH360 Tours solutions at no additional cost. For further information about RICOH360 Tours, please visit RICOH360 Tours website to explore the new features and learn more about the products and services offered. Source: RICOH360 Tours |
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 WGAN Fan Club Member Gilroy, California |
Dataventurer private msg quote post Address this user | |
| My first post here! I took a week to look at camera options for real estate tours. Looking for the least costly solution that would produce good quality tours. I stumbled onto the Ricoh Tours site and initially thought I had found my "silver bullet" solution with their Theta SC2 and hosting offer. The demo that I viewed was part of a "Here's how Ricoh Tours works" video, starting with opening the bag with the monopod and camera, through to publishing a short tour. I noticed that the transition between rooms was not ideal: when moving into a new room, the orientation of the camera was not as if you had walked through the door. I found it somewhat disorienting. I called the sales office in Redwood City, CA (about 60 miles away) and spoke with Martin, who addressed my several questions. He noted that the orientation of the front lens of the camera (Theta SC2 is the one in their promo bundle)would dictate the direction of the tour when linking to that shot. It sounds like you have to make those determinations when shooting and aren't able to adjust later in their software platform. This was a deal killer for me since I am producing tours for real estate. Also, the SC2 has a function to split the exposure settings for the two lenses, which would be helpful when taking a shot with a window - face one lens toward the windows and one away. Doing that would then create a photo that could be better exposed, but might not be oriented in the right direction when entering the room. Yeah, this is a detail but it could be a source of frustration later. The promo deal includes a one-year unlimited subscription to the Ricoh hosting service, which is $45/month after the promo year expires. Your first-year monthly cost works out to about $14 per month (adding on the cost of the promo bundle, $495, above the hardware-only price, $324). The service creates a web page for each tour with automatic personal branding. Without diving into that more deeply, it appears to be a page that is not customizable. The 360 photos must still be manually linked together. So, the Ricoh Tours offering appears to be a good solution for agents who want something really easy to create a tour and be able to share it quickly and simply. I looked at what it would take to host on a separate service and found that Kuula (recommendation by Ben Claremont in his November 2019 comparo was key in my decision to head in that direction) platform to offer what appears to be easier adjustment of the direction when entering a room. And I discovered that Kuula enables some simple color and contrast adjustments. These features may add some post-processing time, but the benefits would be worth it to me. Their Pro subscription is $16 per month paid monthly, $12 if paid for a year for unlimited tours. All these factors persuaded me to pass on the Ricoh Tours offer and order a Theta SC2 from Amazon, $296 plus tax. Bought a $29 monopod with attachments. I placed the order on Wednesday night and the items arrived Friday morning. I won't open the boxes yet until I complete a couple of must-do tasks. Then, fun, fun, fun this July 4th weekend! |
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 WGAN FanClub Member Queensland, Australia |
Wingman private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I cannot get why they want almost double for "team management" and "2D stills auto placement" I cannot see any benefits to pay extra $35 monthly just for that. I do not believe it is the most popular as they say on the pricing page. I bet Insta will be coming with something like Ricoh Tours soon too. I do not have any Ricoh camera left and I cannot test it. Do they let you load a floor plan first and then place each 360 correctly on the plan? I asked once for Pano2VR to do the same as it simplifies each pano placement but it went unnoticed. Manual linking should be easy, precise placement of each pano without any reference to a floor plan, that's what is really time consuming. |
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Kumar private msg quote post Address this user | |
| the tour interface is so poor, i wonder why would anyone opt for this? | ||
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