A virtual tour for many Schools or Centres is currently a PDF or webpage with some small images of the facilities or rooms. We thought that the University deserved a more immersive and engaging virtual experience for potential students or interested visitors, especially considering some of the historical, architectural and visual environments around the campus.
Over the last year and a half, working with 2 photographers and working around a challenging set of variables – Edinburgh weather, budget windows that coincided with everyone being on holiday, access problems, trying to find willing student and academic models in late July, the Festival – we’ve documented 60+ locations across the 11 Schools of the College for Humanities and Social Science, and several sites around the Central campus.The panoramas completed so far are collected on the explore website. We hope to have some content for each School in the CHSS by the first week of September, as well as more panoramas for the themed tours – Libraries, Historical, etc.
Photography
Each location is photographed using a panoramic tripod head, which revolves the camera around the focal point of the lens to ensure the perspective remains stable in each shot.
A sequence of 6 shots using fish-eye lens can be taken rapidly at a lower resolution, but the majority of panoramas were shot with a fixed lens to ensure high-resolution images. This allows the viewer to zoom in on details in the shots, or to pan around the inside of buildings like the McEwan Hall and see details which are not usually visible.
Stitching the images
The panoramas were stitched using the PTGUI package, which can stitch images in a variety of perspectives and views. The one we’re using generally for the panoramas is a 2:1 Equirectangular projection.
PTGUI uses embedded EXIF data from each image and some manual settings and settings, and then hunts through each image in a sequence for matching ‘control points’ – identical features in adjacent images – and, in theory, stitches the panorama together; in practice you often have to go in and add control points manually, especially if there are ‘difficult’ textures in the image (ceiling tiles, patterned carpets).
Controls can also be added along features in the image to level it vertically or horizontally. The software then exports the stitched equirectangular image at the desired size, resolution, image format and compression.
An additional layer of complexity is added where we’ve used bracketing in the photos to get a balanced image of the inside of a room and also capture the views outside.
The next step is a visual check in Photoshop to remove any minor glitches produced by PTGUI, or anything that we couldn’t control in the original environment – posters that would date the image, dirty windows, scaffolding, coffee rings on tables, unfortunate expressions…
Tour creation
KRPANO / KOLOR PANOTOUR PRO
The tours , or individual panorama, can then be built and content added. The example in the Resources section below from the ECA website was produced using the KRPano software package. This transforms our equirectangular image into a series of tiles, ordered by folder, for desktop browsers and a smaller batch of tiles for mobile devices. It also generates a sreies of XML files that define the viewing parameters: menu position, available transforms – architectural view, little planet, globe etc – and embedded information hotspots or the zoom and pan movements the viewer sees on moving between scenes.
To produce a entire virtual tour, however, krpano has some limitations – no one wants to edit XML files all day for fun. The Kolor Panotour Pro package allows relatively easy construction of fully-featured tours through a GUI.
A series of complete panoramas, or cube faces, can be dragged into the editor, and hotspots added to link each scene, so viewers can be led through a tour. Geo-location and orientation can be added to each panorama; this allows e.g. exact orientation for iPad users. Pop-out maps – either Google , Bing or Open Street Map – can be attached to tours – each panorama is linked on the map and directionally synchronised using the compass tool.
Embedded video content can be added by simply dropping in Vimeo or Youtube links – the video frame will sit inside the panorama .Alternatively, video files can be embedded directly into the panorama; these will then transform or rotate as the viewer pans around (see the Reid Hall example on the ECA tour).
All these extra features, and the styling of the menus and controls – can be themed using template files, allowing easy branding for different Schools, Centres or projects.
Panoramas that are added through a University account to the 360 Cites website will also appear on the Google Earth panorama layer.
Embedding on University sites
The ECA examples use a module that allows an editor to upload the equirectangular image and XML controller file through the Drupal Admin interface. A future development would be a module that allows uploading of complete tours.
The tours can be embedded in Polopoly, but careful consideration needs to be given here – the lack of screen real estate means the tours need to be set to display the minimum of screen clutter – ideally the full-screen option is highlighted to encourage the viewer to view it in full-screen mode. Polopoly demo
A WordPress plugin allows simple embedding using shortcodes. I’ve developed the ‘explore’ website using this as a showcase for the panoramas, and to show the options for presenting themed tours to different audiences
Future development
- Workflow for adding content for Schools and departments
- Integration with Campus Maps
- Drupal module for complete tour upload
- Tours for CSE and CMVM
- Packaging tours for offline use on pen drives or discs
- Virtual Learning Environments – embedding video tutorials in School or university locations
- Use in Virtual Open Days
Resources and examples
Drupal example with single panos: ECA Metal Workshop
The single ECA panoramas were produced using the krpano software; views and parameters were adjusted manually in each panorama’s XML file, and the image and XML uploaded using a custom module. The next step here would be a module that would allow uploading of complete tours, allowing more flexibility in adding content and media to the panoramas
PTGUI software
The software used for stitching the images together into complete panoramas. Personal licenses are approx. £63, but a trial version is available.
krpano
The software used to build the panorama projections from the equirectangular images produced by PTGUI.
Kolor Panotour
Based on the krpano engine, this package provides a (slightly clunky) GUI to construct multi-featured tours with embedded video/websites, information hotspots and soundtracks. Video tutorials, comprehensive support documentation and forums. Educational licenses are half price (£158) and cover 2-3 machines.
Kolor also produce Livepano, which allows embedding ‘presenters’ in the panoramas – I’m not quite convinced by this yet, it approaches the ‘uncanny valley‘ and would need to be very well produced to be attractive to viewers. See this Harvard tour for a similar idea.
360 cities
Showcase website for panoramic images.
Questions?
You can contact me at :
david.oulton@ed.ac.uk (6)51 51 94