IUVTOUR–IU-VIRTUAL-TOUR PLATFORM

During the spreading of the COVID-19 pandemic, people’s demand for direct visits and exhibitions is restricted. Therefore, the virtual tour model is an effective solution for users to visit many places, such as universities, museums, and shopping centers, without having to go there. Currently, many virtual tour models have been built and used. However, most existing systems require images to be captured with specialized cameras. This increases the cost, making it very difficult to construct virtual tour systems. In this study, we propose IUVTour - a low-cost, open-source virtual tour platform, to solve those existing problems. Firstly, images of the locations were taken through the Google Street View app on a smartphone. Next, we use SinGAN - an open-source image processing platform, to improve the quality of captured images. Through the Marzipano Tool platform, the virtual tour model has features such as audio narration, video, and relevant display information to enhance the user experience. Comparisons with similar virtual reality platforms demonstrate that IUVTour has lower costs and better performance than previous models. Therefore, the results of this research are expected to be applied to build virtual tour websites for universities, museums, and shopping centers efficiently. Keywords: virtual tour, covid–19 preparedness, low-cost system, open source platform, IUVTour.