In simple terms, assume there is a guy sitting in front of a computer and taking a photo of his computer. tell me what can you see in this photo, obviously the computer, right? since he is behind the camera taking the photo of the computer and you cannot see him in this photo.
Now assume, he took a selfie of him in his same place. now, what can you see in the photo? you will see him in this photo, right? and not the computer.
The point I am telling here is, if you take the first photo, you can see the computer in it, and not the man behind the camera. Similarly, if you take the second photo, you can see the man in it and not the computer behind the camera.
Now, assume that the photo which the man took was not the normal photo, its the 360 photo, here is the thing, if its the 360 photo, one photo is enough to capture everything, means in one photo itself, you can see the computer in it and once you rotate the photo which you have taken, you can see the man sitting in front of that computer also.
Let me break it in a much more easier way.
Normal photo is where a person is standing and whatever it’s in front of him is recorded as the way but once it’s recorded(i mean captured), whoever seeing the photo does not have the ability to change his direction to see what is behind him.
360 photo is also the same where a person is standing and whatever its in front of him(as well as his behind) is recorded as the way but once it’s recorded, whoever seeing the photo has the ability to change his direction to see what is behind him.
Now you will realize you can virtually experience how it will be if you were at that place when it’s taken. This is the reason why people mostly prefers 360 photos when compared to the normal photos.
Let us improve this story a bit to understand what is virtual tours.
Assume that we have a 360 photo of another room which is on the right side of the room where the man is sitting. If someone see the 360 photo of the room where the man is sitting, they can experience how that room looks but they will not know which side the another room is, where the other 360 photo is taken. Its because 360 photos are taken at separate place and one cannot able to learn which side the other place is. This is where Virtual Tour comes into picture. Virtual Tours, where multiple 360 photos are connected to one another which will give the ability to the user to move the experience the place.
In a very simple words,
360 photo will just give the ability to rotate and see how it was. Virtual tours will give the ability to move from the place where the photo was taken and to go to another 360 photo if connected.
I hope it will be useful in getting the basic idea of 360 photos and Virtual Tours. Thanks for reading.