The medium decides who controls the camera, and that decides what information people actually get.
Anyone who markets a place faces the same problem. A crew walks a route, an editor cuts it, and the viewer sees what the crew saw. That is a good fit for a story and a poor fit for a question.
A study from Universitas Brawijaya compared a YouTube video and a WebVR tour of the same faculty building in Surabaya, produced by the same team. The WebVR format left users with more control over what they looked at, and with more detail in hand at the end.
A video has a running order. That is its strength: a presenter can walk a visitor from the gate to the lab to the canteen in ninety seconds, with no effort from the viewer. The cost is that every question the presenter did not think of goes unanswered, and the viewer cannot go back to check.
A 360 degree scene inverts that. Nothing is scripted, so a curious visitor can linger on the equipment in a laboratory or check how wide a corridor really is. For a prospective student weighing a move to another city, that freedom is the point.
Video remains cheaper, faster and easier to distribute. It also works without a strong browser and a decent connection, which still matters on the phones many students carry. The practical answer is rarely one or the other. Put the guided story in a video, and put the questions it cannot answer in a 360 tour beside it.
Pratama et al. (2023). Improving Information Delivery Effectiveness and Efficiency Using WebVR Technology. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Sustainable Information Engineering and Technology, 657-663.
