What is a panorama?

A panorama is an image (or a set of images) that covers a much wider field of view than a single camera frame — from a wide stitch of a living room wall to a full 360×180° spherical image. In real estate, "pano" often means a listing photo that was shot with a 360° camera and displayed as a look-around still: you drag to spin, but you do not walk.

Panorama vs 360° virtual tour vs walkable splat

These get collapsed in sales copy:

• Panorama — a wide or spherical image. Look-around if it is 360°. No furniture restyle unless someone edited the pixels. No walking.
• 360° virtual tour — a product category. Might be a pano viewer, a Matterport-style connected scan, or a generated room you can look around in.
• Walkable splat — a 3D scene (often a Gaussian splat) you can move through with WASD, not only spin in place.

Roomersive's look-around is tour-shaped; the walkable output is splat-shaped. Neither is "we stitched six photos into a pano of the current room." The input is one standard listing photo, optionally restyled.

Example

An agent shoots a vacant living room with a phone. A true panorama workflow would have them also shoot a 360° ball, host it in a pano viewer, and still show an empty room. A Roomersive workflow restyles that one still, then generates a look-around (and optionally a walk) of the furnished proposal. The buyer gets the spin without the extra camera.

Related terms

• 360° virtual tour — the listing product buyers actually ask for
• Photogrammetry — building geometry from many photos, not from one restyle
• Gaussian splatting — the 3D representation behind a walkable room
• Equirectangular image — the usual file layout for a full spherical pano