Tour Wrist is a new iOS app that immerses viewers.inside your photographed environments. As a user points their iDevice up, it acts as a window or portal, revealing skies in picturesque, distant cities. Turning around may reveal a resort’s courtyard or pool. And looking down stands to reveal a cobblestone street or beautifully restored hardwood floors. Tour Wrist 2.0 was released one month ago and is available free for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.

Spark Labs Press Release

Panoramic images have never looked so good. With Tour Wrist®, a long–established medium is being reinvented. Instead of forcing people to view a photographer’s cylindrical or spherical imagery in flat, 2D representations (like print or web), this iOS app immerses viewers, placing them inside your photographed environments.

So as a user points their iDevice up, it acts as a window or portal, revealing skies in picturesque, distant cities. Turning around may reveal a resort’s courtyard or pool. And looking down stands to reveal a cobblestone street or beautifully restored hardwood floors. “The intimacy and tactility we’re providing is really breathing new life into the medium” says SPARK LABS founder and CEO Charles Armstrong. Of course, users can also navigate using touch controls as well, but then, that’s skipping half the fun.

As Charles explains, “We’ve developed a platform that finally does the photographer justice. Instead of the sort of top–down, artificial constructs that have handicapped industry growth thus far, Tour Wrist® has been engineered to put panos on a pedestal, market photographers in the burgeoning mobile space, and build a broader appreciation of the merits of panoramic imagery.”

Tour Wrist® 2.0 was released one month ago, for use on iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. In the first week of its release, 2.0 saw over 10,000 new downloads and skyrocketed to the top 30 list of entertainment iPad apps (free). Given that the app is free to contribute to, download, and use, this is one platform that stands to actually shake things up.

The link to the SPARK LABS site is here.  You can watch a video on youtube, and to download on iTunes.

What is it?
Combining real–time accelerometer and magnetometer data, Tour Wrist® precisely tracks each mobile device as the user moves it through space. Simultaneously, the application uses this movement to control loaded virtual tour imagery and displays the corresponding field of view on each mobile device’s screen. So while a user may be sitting inside, their device may reveal a beautiful night sky or turning around can take the user through the full, 360° view from the top of the Eiffel Tower. The experience is tactile and completely immersive, allowing users to intuitively navigate real–world environments remotely.

Which devices are supported?
Tour Wrist® 2.0 has just been approved by the App Store, providing optimized delivery for the iPhone 4 and iPad, while continuing it’s support of older iPhones and iPod Touches.

What types of tours are available?
This platform offers users the ability to search for scenic destinations, dining and retail shops, hotels, real estate, and vehicles. It also delivers customized mini–apps (called “Ports”) which specialize in specific educational or gaming content. The first example of this, “CrimeSeen 360”, has just been released for the University of Florida’s Forensic Science program. Additional Ports are also under development, with release dates prior to the year’s end.

How much does it cost?
Tour Wrist is entirely free to download and use.

What else is planned?
Tour Wrist’s counterpart recording app is coming soon. This breakthrough product will soon allow any iPhone 4 user to easily create and share beautiful, immersive AmaTours™ without any prior experience or the need for additional equipment. Furthermore, Tour Wrist® Manager is on the way, providing a free library management web application that allows power users to mass-manage their content.

About
As an app developer and counterpart to branding agency SPARK, SPARK LABS designs innovative web and mobile products that empower the user while simplifying their experience. For more information about Tour Wrist®, please visit TourWrist.com or contact Charles Armstrong at (813) 486-4400 or [email protected].

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