Telluride Launch of SocialViews

Photo(C)Barry Brecheisen

It's that time of year around Telluride when change is in the air. The leaves are changing, the peaks display their fresh coats of snow and Telluride rocks out to the age old tradition called Telluride Blues & Brews! Yep, it's here everyone and we're bringing it to you up-close and personal. This weekend we are launching a new service called SocialViews. SocialViews is a large scale social tagging project intended to bring everyone together via social media, extend the life of the event and create a viral tagging frenzy getting the message out for your event, festival, tradeshow or any other large gathering of people.

The statistics from large scale social tagging events are very impressive. One event in Europe generated 9,000 tags, equaling 1.1 million wall posts on Facebook! These are serious numbers when it comes to social media and all of us at SlopeViews are excited to offer this service. In fact, Telluride Blues & Brews is only the second event in Colorado to utilize this platform!

We want to thank the Telluride Blues & Brews Festival , Telluride Ski & Golf, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Telluride Alpine Lodging
and all the other sponsors on board helping promote this event.

Stay tuned for more blog posts over the weekend with images from each day and some fun little surprises thrown in for good measure. Everyone have fun out there and enjoy the very impressive lineup of this year's 18th Annual Telluride Blues & Brews Festival!!

SlopeViews Forms New Strategic Partnership With Fairways360 For Virtual Golf Maps

SlopeViews is proud to announce the forming of a new strategic partnership with Fairways360, one of our fellow Immersive Media Agents. Fairways360 is mapping courses all over the country and is the leader in providing immersive maps for the golf industry, taking online marketing for golf courses to the next level. Fairways360’s revolutionary technology seamlessly integrates into existing websites creating a true, cost effective virtual tour. We have adapted their safe, efficient and effective process for mapping golf courses. The process is quick with minimal interruptions and maintains the lowest footprint for capture. For SlopeViews, golf plays an important role for the mountain resort economy in the summer months and we are glad to offer the Fairways360 course maps to our client base. So we ask the question, is your course on the map? If not, contact us for more details to bring your course to golfers online.

Google Brings Slope View To Vail Resorts

Back in the beginning of February there was a big development with Google Maps. Google is never short of news stories and when the Winter Olympics in Vancouver took place they brought Street View to the slopes and enabled everyone with access to the internet to see the beautiful landscape and ski slopes the athletes were heading down in detail along the tracks. “We wanted to do our best to try to capture some beautiful imagery, and have it available to everyone around the world to see so they can really experience what it’s like to be up there on the slopes,” said Google Senior Mechanical Engineer Daniel Ratner. It’s actually a fairly interesting experience cruising down the slopes through Google Maps, and you don’t need to go out in the cold.



To provide Street View style coverage of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the engineers at Google fitted a still panoramic camera rig to a snowmobile so folks at home could experience the Olympic venues and Whistler-Blackcomb Mountain from the safety and comfort of their desk chairs. Google could not have picked a more appropriate event to launch the “Slope View” version of Street View. While a lot of people were not sure if this was a special project for the Winter Olympic Games, we have just found out that it was not.

Google has now moved on to capturing and mapping all of Vail Resorts. As Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone are our stomping grounds here at SlopeViews, we are pleased to know they have chosen Vail Resorts as the launching pad for all the ski resorts in the United States. We wish them good luck and are excited to see the projects when they are finally done.

Some may think this is direct competition with SlopeViews, but we view it as a compliment and a way to validate our vision. People are becoming more and more used to the point and click still images of Street View and other mapping portals. What we have been seeing emerge now is the use of full 360° video by companies trying to fill niche markets, especially in Europe. While Google is doing a tremendous job, and with the future looking very bright for them, it does not make sense for them to map the world in full video. These ripe markets will be filled with more specialized and targeted businesses. So to sum this up, while Google is spearheading the new mapping era, expect to see additional “street level imagery”, especially in video from many different companies as the public gets more used to this concept and becomes increasingly demanding of new technologies.


With Google Slope View, you click on the arrows to move from one still image to another in your desired direction


The fading out of one still image into the next. The shots are taken in increments down the slope


The next image. As you can imagine, this is very different from full 360° video, but still offers a great user experience

SlopeViews Official Launch Of OnSnow™

On March 22nd we launched our much anticipated OnSnow™ ski resort trail maps. The maps allow resorts to showcase their ski runs, lifts, and base villages in 360° immersive video. Integrated with augmented reality, OnSnow™ provides the most immersive and engaging media to date. When keeping the current direction marketing is headed in mind, people are more and more demanding when a product is presented to them. A static picture or even a 360° panoramic will no longer do. Video can fail to strike a chord as well, not withstanding how professionally it might have been assembled, and how illustrative it stands. People are simply accustomed to demanding more these days and as a result, traditional media is becoming obsolete. OnSnow™ is a great way to not only show a prospective guest the premises where they will be staying, but to also provide forthcoming visitors with a good representation of the amenities offered at any park or resort.

"Resorts are always seeking that competitive edge to drive business and help prospective guests choose their destination. What better way than to show exactly what your resort offers and merge it with a booking system." says Sarah Allen of Powderhorn Resort.

OnSnow™ integrates 360° video with any trail map, village map, or building floorplan. In a double-paned window, users can see an interactive trail map in one pane, and synchronized 360° immersive video in the other. Ski runs, lifts, and select mountain features represent “video paths”. By clicking on any point of a “video path,” users are immediately taken to that location via 360° video. With a simple click and drag of a computer mouse, each user can control their point of view, and the entire resort experience is suddenly available for exploration. The experience is completely immersive, allowing the viewer to look around in any direction while the video is playing, or pause and zoom in on an area of interest.

Vail Resorts is one of the first to adopt interactive video for its resort websites. “The immersive technology allows us to provide our website visitors with the true experience of each mountain resort, before they actually arrive. As a result, skiers and riders can have a one-of-a-kind viewing experience each time and can truly preview an area that they’ve never seen. We employ a lot of video on our sites, and feel as if these videos allow us to go one step further in bringing the experience of the great outdoors to life.” says Charles Townsend of the Vail Resorts Interactive Marketing Team.

We are extremely excited to bring our full-motion interactive video maps to the travel industry. OnSnow™ can give resorts a competitive edge and drive purchase intent by helping prospective guests feel more comfortable in choosing their destination. A conventional 2D video can be more illustrative in its own right; however, with immersive video the user has full control over what is being displayed making it all feel more personalized, and people ultimately love that. We have seen the success of 360° street-level imagery from online mapping and travel portals and adding the element of motion capture to 360° imagery is the next step. The key advantages with OnSnow™ are immediately noticed. OnSnow™ is alive with 360° video, allowing viewers to take a run, ride the lifts, and experience many of the amenities offered without leaving the comfort of their home or office. This is a true virtual tour with complete interactivity.

SlopeViews On NBC's Denver Affiliate Speaking About OnSnow™ 360° Video Trail Maps

James Lee of SlopeViews discusses with Gregg Moss of 9NEWS our OnSnow™ 360° video trail maps for the ski industry. The displayed OnSnow™ trail map is of Whistler Mountain in British Columbia. SlopeViews wants to thank Gregg Moss and 9NEWS for their support and inviting us to come and discuss this exciting development with them. For more information and to experience a preview of OnSnow™ go to www.slopeviews.com/onsnow-beta Have fun!

PlanetDo.com Meets SlopeViews

While at the SIA Snow Show we met the crew from PlanetDo.com. First of all, they are really fun people with an abundance of enthusiasm, but what makes them stand out is their shared excitement and passion for the outdoors all brought together for one really cool concept. Their aim is to unite a world that can't sit still, and so far that includes Alpine & Nordic Skiers, Snowboarders, Mountain Bikers, Road Cyclists, Trail Runners, Campers, Hikers, Paddlers and Climbers. For anyone seeking a better, more satisfying human-powered and/or gravity-propelled outdoor experience, PlanetDo.com will allow you to enjoy the rush and share it with the rest of the planet. Through user-generated content, social networking, user reviews, videos, deals and steals, PlanetDo.com is a gathering place for active outdoor people. Visit www.planetdo.com to read more about them and to join their mailing list and be notified as soon as they go live. Upon meeting their team, they seemed just as excited about our concept as we are about theirs and this video shot by Honey Parker of PlanetDo.com with James Hay reflects that excitement. We want to thank our friends over at PlanetDo.com for their support of our vision and we look forward to working with them in the near future.

SlopeViews On NBC 9NEWS

Keep your eyes on 9NEWS, NBC’s Denver affiliate on Wednesday March 17th for a live in-studio segment with SlopeViews. Business reporter Gregg Moss will sit down with us and discuss our technology and vision, including the new launch of OnSnow, our new 360° video trail map. We are proud to be recognized by 9NEWS as it continues to lead the ratings in most time slots, especially in the morning, as it has done since the mid-70’s. This run is among the most remarkable in the annals of local TV. Check out the website of 9NEWS for more information.