3D Virtual tour of White City Campus
A new 3D virtual experience of the Campus has been designed to showcase its unique spaces during these challenging times.
by Amna Siddiq, Dan West
A new 3D virtual experience of the Campus has been designed to showcase its unique spaces during challenging times.
Teaming up with HeadBox and using Matterport’s 3D camera technology, a 3D virtual tour of White City Campus has been created to allow users to visualise the innovative spaces and state of the art facilities on-site. The immersive experience allows the user to click-through each building and find out more about the innovation and enterprise activity by clicking on red dots throughout the tour, referred to as ‘mattertags’.
The tour enables the visitor to view everything within a 360° radius. It offers a ‘dollhouse view’ which is a birds eye view of the building and allows the user to control and choose which area or space they would like to visit, by using the ‘highlights’ reel. Users have the opportunity to visit over 8 research facilities and buildings on Campus. College buildings may not be accessible in the usual way due to lockdown, but the 3D tour helps tell their unique stories in a virtual environment.
Professor Oscar Ces, Head of the Chemistry Department and Co-Director of the Imperial College Advanced Hackspace said “The virtual tour is a fantastic way to make White City Campus accessible, allowing users to go behind the scenes and see inside our incredible research and innovation spaces. This is especially important during the current lockdown restrictions where we cannot run our normal programme of visits, events and face-to-face tours on Campus.
Given the likely staggered nature of our return to Campus, and longer terms changes to ways of working post pandemic, the 3D tour will continue to act as an important engagement tool that allows us to reach our diverse audiences locally, nationally and internationally.”
As the Campus develops over time, the virtual tour offering will develop and include new features and more 360’s of more academic department facilities.
