The Capitol Reef Field Station is a self-sustaining property which includes water-treatment and solar panels.

The Importance of Planning a VR Experience

An overview on how a map, can make a difference in a project

The UVU Capitol Reef Field Station is a facility located in the heart of Capitol Reef National Park. In a partnership with the National Park Service, Utah Valley University has built the self-sustaining property for faculty and students to visit and learn about environmental issues, as well as a place to “unplug” and be engaged in the learning experience. In January 2016, we began a multi-year project to work with the Capitol Reef Field Station (CRFS) to provide interactive methods of promoting the facility to UVU faculty, as well as research and implement new tools to enhance the experience of CRFS visitors, while maintaining the “unplugged” environment that they promote. In 2016, the project included the design and development of a base app for the field station, that will be further developed and published in the future. Virtual tours were also developed, which are now being used as a marketing tool for the property, by the CRFS staff.

UVU Digital Media students took two trips to the field station during which they photographed tours for the website and app, learned about the area’s history, and participated in regular visitor activities, such as the night sky program.

Virtual Tours

The UVU Digital Media program teaches students how to develop virtual tours, and and use the technology to enhance a person’s online experience, through an Authoring for Virtual Reality Experiences course. After discussing issues with the CRFS staff, and putting ourselves in the shoes of others who were trying to plan the trip, our team and mentors concluded that what they had learned about virtual reality could be implemented for the Capitol Reef Field Station to not only promote the breathtaking property, but also to help faculty and students learn about the place they would be staying, to plan for their trip.

Designing an Experience

While there was not a need to design an entire website, because the project would be hosted on the school’s CMS, the experience itself had to be planned to make the tool as effective as possible. Before any other decisions were made, we had to decide how the tours would be structured, asking questions such as “Will the entire property be included in a single tour, or separated into individual tours?” “How will people access specific locations on the property?” and “If the property is separated, how should this be done, and how will a person get from one area to another?” While the CRFS staff had their input, and specifications about what should be included, our team began finding the answers as we looked at a map of the property, to decide how the property would be segmented in the tour, but also what it meant for the information architecture of the CRFS site and how students and faculty would navigate from place to place.

The map of the property not only helped us to decide on website and tour navigation, but it became one of our most important tools throughout the remainder of the project. Because we knew that we would need to be efficient about taking pictures for the tour during our 24-hour visits, we laminated the map and used dry-erase markers to brainstorm and notate where nodes, or individual 360 degree views made up of seven fisheye images, would be located, and how they would connect with one another within individual tours, as well as with other property sections. This gave our team a better idea of the number of nodes we needed to photograph and the equipment we would need for our initial trip.

Over time, the map we used to plan the tour evolved. It began with standard node markers, but once the assets were being collected, some of these locations changed, and we found it would be more beneficial to number the nodes, so we could reference them at a later date.

Implementing and Revisiting the Design

After planning where the nodes would be taken, the map we used for planning still played a large role in the development of the virtual tours. Like any project, things do not go according to plan, and as the designer, you must be able to revise your design based on new information that becomes available to you. During our initial trip especially, there were things that created obstacles for our tours that we were not able to see on a map. Because we laminated the document however, we were able to change the “node map,” keep track of revisions, and make notes about specific locations and popups to refer to at a later time, especially when we reshot the tours during our final tip in May. It was also used as a communication tool, because people working in different areas were able to mark what had been done, and what hadn’t, so there were no gaps in the VR experience, due to a lack of assets.

Referencing Assets

Once we collected the assets our team needed, we were able to begin developing the tours. Various tools were used to do so, including Adobe Photoshop, Kolor Panotour, and Kolor Autopano Giga, but similar to the project leading up to this stage, we constantly referenced our map to organize and name files according the the numbers we assigned each node during our shoots, to keep track of which nodes belonged to which location, and how they connected to one another. Because of the size of the property, this made our development process more efficient because we had already spent the time figuring out how and where each panorama was connected. It also gave us a way to validate our work, to make sure nothing was overlooked. Once the tours were developed, they were put onto a server, and embedded to the field station’s website, according to our planned navigation that was decided at the beginning of project.

Once assets were edited and stitched, Panotour Pro was used to link panoramas together, and output the tours.

While some may say that you cannot plan a virtual reality experience without visiting the property first, our team was able to do just that. There is a lot of planning and design for the experience itself, that can be strategized so that development can be done as efficiently as possible. Yes, there will be changes along the way, but as designers, we can start with simple assets such as maps and markers to determine the architecture of a project, and how different pieces will work together. Overall, the project was a success, and a large part of that success was the detail in which we planned and documented our tour development process. After testing and featuring the tools at faculty gatherings and other promotional events, the UVU Capitol Reef Field Station staff is receiving positive feedback about the virtual tours, that can now be found at www.uvu.edu/crfs.

To learn more about planning a virtual experience, check out the work other UVU Digital Media students are doing, to prepare for their trip to Scotland in May 2017.