Welcome to a Virtual Reality Tour of our school, Ethical Culture, one of the three schools of the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. The building has six floors, a basement and a sub-basement We have chosen eight rooms of interest in our school to create virtual reality panaromas so you can take virtual tours of the rooms. When you move your mouse over the picture of our school a photo of the room appear below the main menu. When you click on the floor, it will take you to the page of the room. You can view the room as though you were standing in the center of the room. Have a fun time browsing around our school!
Read about how we created the virtual reality tour.

33 Central Park West • New York • New York
Take a virtual tour of the room. Click the mouse in the picture, hold the mouse button down and drag the pointer in the direction you want to view. The faster you drag to the left or right, the faster the image will move to reveal other parts of the room. Zoom in on parts of the image by pressing the shift key and zoom out by pressing the control key. Imagine you are standing in the center of the room and looking around. If you cannot see the image you do not have the right plug-in. Go to Resources

VIRTUAL REALITY TOURS

How we created the virtual reality panoramas of the different rooms in our school

I'm sure you want to know how we made these amazing virtual reality panorams of the room to make a tour of room seem real. Well, here's your chance to find out how! All you need is a digital camera, a tripod, a tripod head, a computer, Virtual Reality authoring software , and a patient photographer. Each member of the team chose a room to create a virtual reality panorama. Some of us chose two rooms. Below is a summarized list of steps we took

  1. choose a good spot to put the tripod - preferably in the center of the room to create a simulation of standing in the center and turning around to view the room
  2. mount the tripod head onto the tripod.
  3. attach the digital camera to the the tripod head – information on how to attach the camera can be found in the manual
  4. adjust the knob on the tripod head to 0 degrees and the turn the camera so that the first shot is taken at 0 degrees
  5. attain the desired settings and angle of level of elevation ( this is where we need help from our teacher to make sure that the camera is properly mounted) and proceed to photograph the room in a circle. (The tedious step which we perform again and again – may be easy but you tend to make a mistake and wish that you were more careful)
  6. the tripod head has a click-stop mechanism that makes it easy to turn the camera to the desired angle- no guessing work -- it is helpful to count the number of photographs taken so that you do not take more than the number desired. - we took a total of 18 photographs in each room. Each photograph was taken at an angle that is 20 degrees more than the previous photograph -- starting at 0 degrees and ending at 340 degrees.
  7. use the software to stitch all the photographs into a VR panorama. We have a choice to either use Quicktime VR Authoring Tool or Photovista and we found that Photovista did a better job. It is simple to use and took no time once we had all the photographs.
  8. Now you have your VR tours!

What tools we used

Computer: Apple Imac with 96 mb memory

Digita; Camera: FujiFilm Digital Cameras – MX 2700 and FinePix 4900 Zoom

Tripod : Vanguard

Photographic Panaromic Tripod Head: Kaidan Photographic VR Tripod head Model KiWi +

Software:

Our opinions and recommendations

Since each of us created a virtual reality panorama we have lots to say about the process. Here are our opinions on the best, and the worst parts of making a VR panorama.

Our words of wisdom to others who want to create virtual reality panorams:

Lan: Be careful when doing the simplest task such as clicking and turning the camera or you'll soon find out that it is the most difficult step in the whole process. Imagine returning to the site when you can only have access the next week to retake the photographs, or when you have to walk 6 flights of stairs to get back there.

Nick : Make sure when you are stitching your VR that you choose the right type of VR. A common mistake is choosing a panaroma VR instead of an object VR or vice versa.

Sherry: The hardest part for me is making sure the camera is in the right spot at the right time. Make sure that while you are taking photographs that there's nobody else in the room, or no body parts in the way of the camera!

Henry: Doing a VR is much harder, and easier, than it seems. All you have to do is take pictures, and stitch them together with a computer program. But if you take two pictures with different spacing between them, then the entire VR is ruined. The smallest seeming mistake could be a big one!

Resources

Visit some interesing virtual tours that we have taken

See Resources page