Welcome to the Virtual Village

This is a 'virtual reality' photo tour through the village of Snitterfield near Stratford-upon-Avon. It was created some time ago (December 1995) but is still quite good fun. I keep getting emails from half way round the world from people who grew up in Snitterfield years ago but have found my tour, which is nice.

Instructions

If your browser supports client-side image maps you can navigate by clicking towards the left of the picture to pan left, to the right to pan right, in the middle to move forwards, and at the bottom edge to step back. Alternatively, the navigation buttons at the bottom of the page perform the same actions.

From the map you can move straight to a different location, where you will be facing in the same direction as before. To look in a different direction use the left or right arrow.

Some starting points

How this tour was produced

The following tools were used:

Hints on photographing a VR tour

This section ought to be entitled "Things I wish I'd done properly from the start". To make life easier when doing this sort of project it's worth spending a bit of time beforehand doing some planning:

- Sort out how you're going to capture the images, what resolution and compression settings and what image conversion software you're going to use before you start. Do a trial run to make sure you're happy with the results, so you don't have to change technique halfway through.

- Decide how many locations you're going to have and how many shots from each location you need before you start. If you have to take more pictures later you will probably find that lighting conditions have changed or objects moved (eg. it's snowed in the meantime, or cars are parked differently... can you spot all the places where I had to paste a car or something into an image taken later to make it look right?)

- For best results, pick a day when it's bright but slightly overcast, so you don't get any sharp shadows, and where the weather isn't about to change.

- Try to have a common point of reference between two images so the viewer doesn't get lost, eg. when panning right an object that is at the right edge of the first image might appear at the left hand edge of the next, or part of a landmark in the distance might appear at the edge of the foreground when you move forward.

- Every movement should have an inverse, eg. if you pan right to get to another view you should be able to pan left from there to get back to the first image.

- Use a consistent naming scheme for your image files, so you know what views are available at a particular location and can find the files.

- You don't have to use Hyperslider to place the links. It's good for seeing how the links work as you go along but you can achieve similar results by using a standard web imagemap preparation program. You could even do it all by hand, though it might be a bit tedious!

Further information

See my virtual lounge (I've sinced moved house!) for another example of this kind of project. The 'read me' file has some additional details. Also, take a look at Dave's tour of Preston Capes.


Rolf Howarth