The lowdown on iPIX

iPIX no longer offers its software that uses a $25 "Key" to produce
each Full 360x360 Image. Although they still support it and sell Keys.
The Keys for their Real Estate Wizard, a lower level product, are only
$20 for 5 keys.

The iPIX Interactive Studio is sold as a one year license that can
produce an unlimited number of images for a year. There is then a
reduced renewel fee.

Even so iPIX is not cheap software. $899 for the basic one year license
with 2 add-on modules available at $499 each. With the Formatter module
the iPIX Interactive Studio can output in Quicktime Cubic Panorama,
Equirectangular Projection, Cubic Strip, Shockwave w3d and of course
their propriatary .ipx format. The Enhancer module has image editing
tools for touching up the images right in the Interactive Studio.
They're pretty powerfull.

But for some one in the business of producing multimedia for the
Internet, that wants to offer Virtual Images for a fee, there's really
no other pratical choice;

Most of the hotel companies only support iPIX; Sheraton, Westin,
Hilton, Doubletree, Wyndham, Radisson and Marriott. If you want to sell
one of these hotels Virtual Images, iPIX is the only one they accept or
the one they prefer.

iPIX is one of the 3 Virtual Image Formats supported by Homestore.com,
who distributes Virtual Tours to Realtor.com, ColdwellBanker.com,
ERA.com, Century21.com, PrudentialRealEstate.com, REMAX.com and
GMACRealEstate.com. Without fast distributuion, a virtual tour of a
home for sale is useless.

Some of the other virtual image software is very good, especially
Quicktime VR. I use PhotoVista for printed panoramas.

But iPIX is really the only choice for the serious Multimedia Producer
that wants to do virtual imaging business with major companies.

If you're only going to make a few Virtual Images for fun or a hobby,
you should go with another company.

Yes I'm an iPIX Virtual Tour photographer. Take a look ate my demo
website at www.VirtualAlbuquerque.com

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM