We are a dedicated Virtual Tour Provider based in Northampton who pride ourselves on offering high-quality work and a good customer experience from start to finish. All our tours are created for viewing in Flash at full screen size, which means the tour literally fills your computer screen.
See the many benefits of Flash below. 
Our story so far
iPix to QuickTime fullscreen tours
The company started in April 2002 by Adrian Salisbury using iPIX technology to produce tours as it was without doubt and still is the easiest system on the market. After 2 years of production though we were looking for ways to produce bigger, higher quality tours and after many months of research and then training we launched our Fullscreen virtual tour service in 2004.
This was a major breakthrough that set us apart from most of our competitors. If you have somewhere worth showing off you want to see it in more than a small screen, that’s like choosing to watch a movie on a 12″ TV while your 32″ plasma sits in standby!
QuickTime to Flash fullscreen tours
Back then we had no choice but to use Apple QuickTime as the only software that would allow fullscreen tours and while the quality is excellent, the coverage of QuickTime users wasn’t and still isn’t great. Downloading the QuickTime plugin is a long, slow process and feedback told us that many simply gave up.
At the end of 2006 Macromedia Flash player 9 was released that, for the first time allowed Flash virtual tours to be seen in fullscreen. Months were spent testing the new platform before moving over entirely to Flash fullscreen virtual tours.
The benefits of our current Flash fullscreen tours
Not only does Flash offer 97% coverage according to the Adobe website, meaning almost all visitors can see our tours without needing to download anything, Flash offers far more functionality to our tours.
Floorplans and maps can now be placed over the tours allowing new scenes to open without the need to keep opening and closing windows.
Interactive element can be added such as the promotional movie that plays on the plasma screen in this room.
Hotspots can be added to the tour that, when clicked, open a photograph, show text or move you to another area. Thomas Deacon Academy offers a good example of this.
Audio can be added to either the complete tour or individual areas. This gives the opportunity to offer a tour guide as you move through. Examples can be seen here. Bells / MK TWO
There are endless possibilities now that Flash allows us to work in this way which means we no more sell a product off the shelf, quoting rates per tour as each job really is different from the next. We welcome the opportunity to visit you and discuss how to get the best out of our tours and help you stand out from the crowd.
Reasons for choosing Optical FX
Without wishing this to sound like a sales pitch we do believe that we are one of the few virtual tour providers able to offer such an advanced and unique product on completion.
Adrian Salisbury does all our photography and much of the editing so you are assured of a high level of commitment right the way through the process.
We recommend that you do your research, see what is on offer and get a feel for who you will be happy working with. The right provider will stand out to you and we do our best to ensure that will be us!
Please call and arrange a consultation if you want to know more or call us any time.