Virtual shopping: Guests will be allowed to visit the store

If 3D map systems such as Google Earth help us see a virtual city from the outside, other online services will lead us to each of the small streets inside.

Mok Oh, founder and Chief Technology Officer of Waltham, EveryScape's subsidiary in Massachuset, announced that EveryScape will conduct street tours or survey businesses in Cambridge and Lexington, Massachuset state. virtual space. Using 3D space technology, tourists visit the virtual city of Cambridge with a click of the mouse to see Brattle Street with real-world details and a tour of the shops and agencies around.

EveryScape expects businesses to pay between $ 250 and $ 2,000 a year for creating and maintaining virtual tours, depending on the virtual space required by the business.

Companies that need to update their list of regular goods, such as those that display seasonal collections, can use a service package that includes a fee for updating.

Many local businesses have subscribed to the service, including Harvard Coop, the main store that bears the name of Harvard University, books and other merchandise businesses.

Visitors to the Cambridge website can walk on red brick roads leading to Harvard Square and then click to explore all three floors of Harvard Coop merchandise display. They can also stop at a ice cream stand by the road and browse the available ice cream flavors.

Denise Jillson, executive director of Harvard Square Business Association, said that ' EveryScape's service will attract companies that want to expand their online businesses. Online business will now not just stop by listing a list of goods like regular websites . '

Of the 350 businesses in the region, many companies have registered for this virtual tour. Jeff Brandes, EveryScape's vice president of business development, said the list of agencies includes well-known units such as Harvard Natural History Museum, Charles Hotel to smaller businesses like bookstores and homes. restaurants, hotels, galleries, a barber shop and a massage center by massage method.

The Harvard Square Business Association website (http://www.harvardsquare.com) is also using a test version of this service, allowing visitors to identify some streets of business headquarters. career, but not yet inside. Jillson said ' Harvard Square's website is a popular site. This site attracts about 2 million visitors a month, including about 37,000 new visitors. this year was 1.3 million and 30,000 'respectively.

Allan Powell, co-director of Harvard Coop, said that ' More and more tourists go online to get to know tourist destinations before deciding on a virtual tour of Coop's store like this to be collected. smoking more suppliers, because customers will know the catalog of the store. We want our store to have a better look through the network . '

Mike Liebhold, a senior researcher at the Institute for the Future, a research organization based in Palo Alto, California, believes that EveryScape is infiltrating the complex map market that giants like Microsoft, Google or Yahoo is active. ' People have seen these streets from the outside. But the idea of ​​bringing them inside is wonderful because Google, Microsoft or Yahoo haven't done it yet. '

One of Liebhold's research topics is " virtual reality, the combination of the real world and the virtual world. EveryScape's service is a vivid example of this activity. Unlike the virtual community like Second Life. , a place only imaginable, EveryScape chose a place as authentic as Harvard Square and reproduced in the virtual world as accurately as possible . '

Mok Oh said ' To rebuild these roads in the virtual world, EveryScape regulates cars to carry reflective cameras with 4 standard single lenses installed on the roof in four directions east and west, south, north on the streets of Cambridge, Lexington and other cities. About 50 meters, the driver captures panoramic photos of the road, serving as a database for resetting in 3-dimensional space . ' Currently, you can try virtual tours like this on certain roads in Boston, New York, Miami beach and Aspen city in Colorado state with the test version on EveryScape's website.

To recreate the interior, a method of taking photos using a wide-angle lens can capture the panorama by shooting two-dimensional images from each other. The software then links these images together and simulates the dimensions. The software also judges what visitors from a certain position in the image will see, such as looking at the ceiling or looking at the floor. These images move quite smoothly when the user moves around with the mouse.

Jerry Michelson, a member of a retail association in Lexington, said the cost of the service was right for his business. A store only needs one to three panoramic views to display all items for visitors at a cost of between $ 250 and $ 500 a year. Jerry signed a contract to his shoe store, Michelson's Shoes, to appear on www.viewlexingtong.com when the site went into operation in December. ' We have been opening a website for years and this is what we should do next .'