Design of Immersive Online Hotel Walkthrough System Using Image-Based (Concentric Mosaics) Rendering

Conventional hotel booking websites only represents their services in 2D photos to show
their facilities. 2D photos are just static photos that cannot be move and rotate. Imagebased
virtual walkthrough for the hospitality industry is a potential technology to attract
more customers. In this project, a research will be carried out to create an Image-based
rendering (IBR) virtual walkthrough and panoramic-based walkthrough by using only
Macromedia Flash Professional 8, Photovista Panorama 3.0 and Reality Studio for the
interaction of the images. The web-based of the image-based are using the Macromedia
Dreamweaver Professional 8. The images will be displayed in Adobe Flash Player 8 or
higher. In making image-based walkthrough, a concentric mosaic technique is used
while image mosaicing technique is applied in panoramic-based walkthrough. A
comparison of the both walkthrough is compared. The study is also focus on the
comparison between number of pictures and smoothness of the walkthrough. There are
advantages of using different techniques such as image-based walkthrough is a real time
walkthrough since the user can walk around right, left, forward and backward whereas
the panoramic-based cannot experience real time walkthrough because the user can only
view 360 degrees from a fixed spot.