VRWAY is headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland and has operations in various European countries. VRWAY was established in 1999 as a publisher of content-rich media for both print and the Internet.
In 2000, Apple’s iServices division closely worked with VRWAY research and development firm - webidentity dot com - to create the largest VR database-driven website on the Internet. The initial website, which featured 143 cities throughout Europe, was cited by Apple as being the first true 3rd generation website on the Internet, meanwhile underlining the state-of-the-art technologies such as Sun/Solaris hardware, Apache webserver and Webobjects application server.
In April 2001, VRWAY launched VRMag, a highly regarded and popular bi-monthly online magazine dedicated to VR photography and travel. VArtist - its companion magazine – is dedicated to the VR industry and VR professionals. Its making requires close contact with hundreds of professional VR photographers, software developers, equipment manufacturers and technology specialists.
In October 2003, VRWAY started to issue Arounder, a travel portal featuring several cities around Europe. Starting with Lugano, Switzerland, the site soon published several other enchanting places such as Athens, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Cologne, Cyprus, Florence, Milan, Monaco, Parma, Pisa, Rhodes, Rome, Venice, Zermatt. In a few months, other cities were added: Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Helsinki, Lisbon, Luxemburg, Madrid, Oslo, Paris, Stockholm, Bruges and Como and others are on the line …
During the same year, in December, VRWAY launched a special website with sixteen fullscreen panoramas of the Vatican and its historical basilicas, accompanied by Gregorian chants performed by Mina Mazzini, Italy’s legendary diva. ‘Mina Sings in the Vatican’ has garnered praise throughout the Internet and has been referred to as ‘awe inspiring’ by the Time.
In March 2004, VRWAY introduced FullscreenQTVR.com, a directory of high-quality fullscreen panoramas on the Internet. High-speed Internet users obtained quick and easy visual access to thousands of virtual locations across the globe, via a thumbnail directory of 360-degrees, fullscreen QuickTime Virtual Reality panoramas. Shortly after, VRWAY launched a sub-site entitled ‘Extreme FullscreenQTVR’, which has become a bloggers’ big hit worldwide.
In February 2005, VRBusinessGuide , an italian thumbnail directory of Business related Virtual Tours was launched and, towards the end of the year, VRWAY released PanoGames, dedicated to the world of video gaming. PanoGames is a new way of showing screenshots inside games, giving gamers a unique chance to be within the major titles on the market such as Quake 4, GT Legends, Battlefield 2, HalfLife 2 and GTR-FIA GT Racing Game, before the games are issued.
In January 2007, VRWAY published Arounder Magazine, a series of thematic and city centric online magazines and a month after, it launched Virtual Panoramic Brochure (VPBrochure.com), a site hosting VRWAY's interactive and immersive digital brochures, meanwhile setting into motion its sales site enabling both customers and resellers to purchase all VRWAY products online.
Spring 2007 saw alliances taking form: VRWAY became the 360° interactive content provider for the Italian portal TGcom, part of the Mediaset Group, meanwhile partnering with HolidayCheck, which runs – since 1999 – the leading source for independent reviews and unbiased opinions concerning travel and vacation on the internet. With more than 1,6 Mio. page views per day, HolidayCheck belongs to the top of the line international travel sites and VRWAY's city panoramas and hotels are available in 360° panoramas on the site. Soon after, VRWAY started providing interactive panoramic experiences to the travel section of the leading German internet portal Focus.de.
In February 2008 VRWAY licensed images for Speed Racer movie to Warner Bros. Entertainment and – in March - launched WRAPR a web 2 project, that takes imagery from the Flickr API and wraps the flat panoramic images in order to create interactive panoramas, which can easily be embedded in websites and blogs.