I’ve been looking at the various shared office spaces and co-working spaces available in Albuquerque, NM over the past year or so. Now, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve put off deciding on one. However last week, I ventured out to the shared office space used by our Financial Planner, David L. Hogans of Intelligent Investing, Inc. I wanted to know more about how Office Alternatives – Albuquerque East on Lang Ave. NE was set up and learn more about their pricing. The manager, Bobby Lucero, was kind enough to show me around and let me do a 360 Virtual Tour in exchange for some time to use their Training Room for portrait sessions in the future.
What is a Virtual Tour?
In a nutshell, a 360 Virtual Tour is simply a series of 360° panoramas (aka panos or photospheres) that are linked together to walk a viewer through a space like a home, commercial space, office space, theater, etc. I even took this camera along with me on my bucket list balloon ride during the Mass Ascension on the last day of the International Balloon Fiesta in 2019. Many of these cameras also take video. The 360° output is viewed on a flat screen like below or on your smartphone either by moving the images with your finger or in virtual reality mode by moving your phone through space. You can also view it through a virtual reality headset like a Google Cardboard. Cardboard viewers are cheap and use your smartphone as the screen. If you are REALLY serious, the Occulus Quest (expensive), Occulus Rift, Playstation VR, Occulus Go, HTC Vive, Valve Index or Pansonite 3D VR headsets (thanks to Tom’s Guide for the latest list of VR headsets for 2020).
A Virtual Tour of Office Alternatives
Below are the results for Office Alternatives – ABQ East. I used an Insta360 One X camera on a Mighty Selfie Stick to do a quick walk through. The resolution of the Insta360 One X isn’t nearly as high as I can get with my Canon 1D X, but it’s pretty good. The One X handles high dynamic range (HDR) better than most of its peers. Its images are also acceptable for Google Street View submission. Using the One X takes a lot less time, too, because the camera automatically takes a set of bracketed images for HDR and stitches them together. You don’t have to take nine images per image location as you would to achieve an HDR image with a DSLR. I used Topaz Sharpen AI to sharpen everything up, and a few minor adjustments with Photoshop.
Interactive Virtual Tour
Use your mouse or finger to click and drag around the image. Use the control panel to zoom in and out, start autorotate, change the perspective, see the individual thumbnails or make fullscreen. Simply click on the hotspots to move through this tour of Office Alternatives – Albuquerque East.
Automatic Virtual Tour – Office Alternatives East
This version of the virtual tour starts to rotate and progress from one viewpoint to another automatically. You can stop the rotation using the control panel at the bottom of the image. Use your mouse or finger to click and drag around the image. You can also put your phone into VR mode so you can move the phone through space to see the space you are in. Use the control panel at the bottom of the image to zoom in and out, stop/start the rotation, or change the perspective. You can also view the individual thumbnails or make the image fullscreen. Simply click on the hotspots to move through the tour.
Short Guided Virtual Tour to Lobby
This shortened video clip of the virtual tour starts to rotate and progress from one viewpoint to another automatically. This clip can be directly uploaded to WordPress via the media library because it is relatively small.
This virtual tour of Office Alternatives Albuquerque – East is comprised of 360° panoramas taken at the points marked with letters on this screenshot of Google Maps (satellite view). The animated version has several superfluous panos removed in order to speed up the tour.