The admissions office at the University of Virginia discovered that one of the things that most interests prospective students is what their dormitory will look like if they attend the university. They contracted to have an extensive series of VR movies produced using Apple’s Quicktime VR technology, but were at a loss about how to put them together so they made sense. Our solution is to embed the movies in an aerial map of the entire university with interactive callouts showing the location of each dormitory’s VR tour.

We feel like one of the peculiar drawbacks of VR technology is that while it does a wonderful job of letting you look around from a particular location, it doesn’t give you the real-world experience of getting to that location. The result, especially with a series of related VR movies, is a nagging sense of disorientation. Essentially, adding the background map replicates the function of physically getting to the location of the VR movie, thereby dispelling at least some of that disorientation.

For a similar treatment of a single building, see our University of Virginia Rotunda VR Tour page.