I have started working as a volunteer for Staffordshire Wildlife Trust as a volunteer on their ‘Transforming The Trent Valley’ (TTTV) project. My role is to help them create some virtual tours. I have spent quite a lot of time on this project so far (which explains my lack of postings over the past few months).
This time has been spent: 1) Taking ‘sphere’ panoramas – that is full circle all the way round, up and down (also known as 360° x 180°) using an older camera. 2) The same with a newer camera (including how to use it with its own software). 3) Taking ‘regular’ panoramas. 4) Taking views of wildlife and the scenery. 5) processing all these photos. 6) learning how to use the new Virtual Tour software. 7) ‘Geotagging’ photos that are not geotagged (putting GPS coordinates on them). 8) Finding and helping to organise other photographers to help. 9) Creating pilot image galleries. 10) Creating a pilot virtual tour.
Below is a cut-down version of the pilot tour used for testing ideas, the software and me! (Note:- Updated May 2021: here is a link to the live tour which will open their website in a new tab: Tucklesholme Nature Reserve.):
The buttons along the bottom from the left: Toggle map on/off; Show full screen; 4 buttons to scroll the picture in the direction shown; toggle thumbnail navigation on/off; Previous and next image in the sequence; Link to the TTTV website.
Other buttons within some panoramas: i = show information; G= show photo ‘mini-gallery’; ‘2 mountains’= show a view; ‘rectangle with arrowhead = show a video; ‘squashed’ rectangle = go to this panorama.
On the small map: each small black circle shows the location of the main panoramas – you can click on these. The active one converts to a white circle with a black dot indicating the direction.
This tour was the result of a number of iterations, trying to incorporate requests and changes – I am getting quite familiar with the manual and tutorial videos! This pilot is going for review with other interested parties so that the basic format of it is laid out before time is spent putting the whole thing together.
You can also pan around by swiping (on a mobile device) or click and drag (on a PC/Mac). Zoom in and out by pinching (mobile device) or use the mouse scroll wheel (PC/Mac)
Examples of some of the challenges for me include: The tour map showing on larger screens but not mobile devices, linking to external galleries, getting appropriate text to show, modifying and creating buttons…