Five years ago, I was moving to a new house and wanted a better way to visualize the new space.
Regular photos weren't enough. I wanted something more immersive that would let me look around the rooms and actually understand the space.
I'm a developer, so I had the classic developer reaction:
"Why not build it myself?"
I created a simple tool to connect 360Ā° panoramas and turn them into an interactive virtual tour.
It was supposed to be just a personal project.
When it was working well enough, I decided to publish the source code on a marketplace, almost as an experiment. I honestly didn't expect much from it.
Then people started buying it.
And that's when the real development started.
Building it was the easy part
Once real users started using the software, they began asking for features, reporting bugs and, most interestingly, using it in ways I had never imagined.
Photographers, agencies, developers and businesses all had different needs.
Over the next five years, I released more than 100 updates. What started as a simple tool gradually became Simple Virtual Tour, a complete platform for creating interactive 360Ā° virtual tours.
Today it includes things I definitely wasn't thinking about when I wrote the first version: VR, AI tools, Google Street View integration, a Cloud version and even SaaS features.
Most of this wasn't part of a roadmap. It came from real users.
Users are great at changing your plans
One of the most important things I've learned is that developing a product isn't just about adding features.
It's also about deciding what not to add.
Every feature adds complexity. It has to work with everything that already exists, be maintained in future updates and, inevitably, introduces new ways for things to break.
After five years, I spend much more time asking "Does this really belong in the product?" than I did at the beginning.
Users also changed some of my assumptions.
Simple Virtual Tour originally existed only as self-hosted software. You bought it, installed it on your own server and controlled your own data.
As a developer, I loved that approach.
But I eventually realized something obvious:
Not everyone wants to manage a server.
Some users wanted ownership and complete control. Others just wanted to create a virtual tour without thinking about hosting, databases, updates or infrastructure.
So I built a Cloud version too.
It was a good reminder that what developers value isn't necessarily what every user values.
Five years later
The biggest lesson for me has been that releasing software isn't the end of development.
It's when the real development begins.
Writing something that solves your own problem is one thing.
Maintaining software used by thousands of real people, with different workflows, expectations and ideas, is something completely different.
Five years later, I'm still personally developing the project, fixing bugs, reading feedback and figuring out what to build next.
Not bad for something that started because I was moving house. š
If you're curious, you can check out Simple Virtual Tour and see what that small side project eventually became.
I'd love to hear from other developers
Have you ever built a side project that ended up becoming something much bigger ā or completely different ā from what you originally planned?
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