VR tours take you to fascinating local places
When the Internet was new, before even the World Wide Web, cyberpunk authors envisioned the potential for immersive virtual reality online. More than three decades after William Gibson’s seminal “Neuromancer,” the reality of VR hasn’t quite caught up to that fictional vision ... but we’re getting there fast.
Not all VR is about imagining new, fantastical realities. It also enables people to explore the real world without leaving the house — or even the couch.
This summer, Taliesin West, the Scottsdale landmark and winter home to architect Frank Lloyd Wright, added to this ever-growing online library of re-created reality when it launched an immersive “digital experience” that can be viewed on 3-D goggles or by pointing and clicking on a computer screen.
“This is the first time that a dataset like this has been collected, put together and then also distributed online for anybody to see,” says Brian Smith, product manager of emerging technologies for Multivista.
The Phoenix-based company collected millions of “data points” to create a digital model of the campus that can be used for future preservation efforts, as well as casual web surfing.
In other words, it’s a lot more detailed than many other 3-D tours you find online, which are often built on images from Google Street View.
The data was collected using the BLK360 imaging laser scanner from Leica Geosystems, Multivista’s sister company.
“A coffee pot is a good description of what it looks like,” Smith says. “Unfortunately, you can’t see the laser as it shoots out, so that’s very anticlimactic. It takes about 31⁄2 minutes to do a 360degree capture of not just the laser data, but also HDR (high-dynamic-range) imagery. The machine itself has literally a one-button push on it. It has a range of about 60 meters, but typically we’ll only move it 10 to 15 meters at a time.”
Here are four virtual tours that will take you to intriguing places throughout Arizona.
Taliesin West
Virtual tour: https://franklloydwright.org/3DLAB/
That Taliesin West Digital Experience is a virtual tour of the “winter camp and desert laboratory” of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who left his stamp on the Valley with numerous homes and buildings, including Arizona State University’s Gammage Auditorium. The campus is packed with fascinating visual details, from the roughedged “found art” incorporated into the décor to telling details such as the mysterious hole in one of the living-room windows. (Turns out, when Lloyd Wright consented to his wife’s wish for glass windows, he refused to move any of the décor, and space had to be cut to accommodate a vase.)
Arizona Science Center
Virtual tour: https://www.azscience.org/visit/ map-virtual-tour/
The Arizona Science Center has grown a lot since it opened in 1984 in a storefront space at the downtown Phoenix Hyatt. Now it’s a major museum with popular exhibits such as “Flight Zone” and “All About Me,” which is all about the body. The Google Street View tour, shot without any annoying museumgoers present, will actually take you inside the cutaway model airplane.
Montezuma Castle National Monument
Virtual tour: https://www.nps.gov/ moca/learn /photosmultimedia/virtual-tour-from -inside-the-castle.htm
Available for both Quicktime VR Movies and JPEG Panoramic Images, this virtual tour takes you inside Montezuma Castle, the ruins of pre-Columbian cliffside dwellings in Camp Verde. Moving up to the fifth floor, the photo re-creation shows incredible detail of this important archaeological site.
Mayo Clinic
Virtual tour: https://www.mayoclinic.org/patient-visitor-guide/ virtual-tours/arizona/360-degreepanoramas
Many virtual tours are straightforward advertising or public relations. You can click through scenes of most university campus, for example, not to mention Cabela’s sporting goods and Harvest of Scottsdale, a marijuana dispensary. One of the more intriguing of these are the 360-degree panoramas of the Mayo Clinic’s Phoenix hospital, including a meditation garden and a nature walk.