Virtual tour around Chorzów. Interactive museum experience
What is an educational VR tour?
Museum in Chorzów
The Museum in Chorzów promotes the culture and history of Chorzów and Silesia primarily by organizing exhibitions and educational projects. The facility is one of Poland’s most valuable numismatic and medal collections.
Challenge
Creating an extensive and widely available virtual tour of the museum in VR technology
- Looking for ways to present the history of the urban space of Chorzów, the city museum decided to use new technologies for this purpose. The advantages of VR technology, 360° photos, and 3D graphics came to the rescue. Thanks to them, virtual tours aimed at museum visitors were to gain an additional dimension.
- The team’s task was to use immersive technologies to build an interactive world. Working on an application supported mainly by virtual reality goggles required many references, including videos, archival photos, and sources. They were to serve as the best presentation of the historical values of the city.
- A significant challenge faced by the Giant Lazer team was the assumption of a multi-platform application. Therefore, the programmers were tasked with preparing a program for VR goggles, mobile devices, web browsers, and a touchscreen TV. The application was also to gain an audio version for the visually impaired.
The project required an attractive presentation of the wide range of materials presented by the Museum. So our company needed to build a visual narrative combining many historical locations and activities. For this purpose, it was necessary to fill the scenes with historical photos and 3D models recreating historical objects.
What have we managed to develop in virtual reality?
Solution
An engaging VR tour – the use of 3D graphics and 360° photography in a virtual reality application
- Based on the client’s materials, we built an application with three modules. The first one is a virtual tour based on exploring the elements of Piotr Naliwajko’s painting. Another is about discovering the historic architecture of Chorzów based on panoramic photographs and locations recreated in 3D. In addition, users can virtually visit the Ruch Chorzów stadium. There await them movies, facts about sports legends, and a mini-soccer game.
- An exciting element of the experience is traveling around Chorzów using historic trams and buses. Each stop on the route means more locations to discover and new opportunities to travel around the city.
- For the comfort of museum visitors, they can run the application on VR goggles, touchscreen PCs, and mobile. The walk is available to customers in Polish and English.
The use of archival photos of the city panorama
3D graphic designers from our team, in cooperation with the Museum in Chorzów, have faithfully reflected the history of this city. In addition, they wanted to highlight the advantages of Chorzów to arouse admiration even among people who had not previously shown interest in this city and the history of its development.
Access to old photographs showing the former everyday life of Chorzów inhabitants
Photos of this nature could make it possible, using VR technology, to accurately present how the inhabitants of Chorzów used to dress and behave in certain situations.
Process
Gathering project assumptions
Defining user journey
Designing 3D scenes and locations based on 360° photos
Preparation of VR, web, and mobile versions
Product delivery and implementation
Technology
HTC Vive Pro
iOS + Android
Touch screen TV
Audio place
Effects
- Success #1 | The engaging nature of the VR solution
The phenomenon of immersion allows visitors to be immediately transported to the historic city. The user has the feeling of being fully immersed in virtual Chorzów. We managed to do it by adding archival photos and building the interior of the museum exhibit. It’s about literally “entering” into another reality. Thanks to this technology, the world seen in VR goggles is attractive to visitors and customers.
- Success #2 | The richness of VR space
Interactions with the outside world, visiting Chorzów using transport recreated in 3D technology, interestingly presented films and photos. Educational content is worth explaining initially, and our company knows it very well – various stimuli and educational content on goggles gain a whole new dimension.
- Success #3 | Wide availability
For the comfort of customers and the solution’s versatility, the application has been adapted not only to the museum’s interior. In addition to the fact that we will use it on VR goggles, everyone can also watch archive films, photos, and locations of Chorzów on mobile devices and in the browser.
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