Virtual Tours: Museums and Universities in a New Light

2020 has thrown some treacherous challenges at humanity, most notably dealing with the highly contagious, often symptomless Coronavirus. In an effort to combat the viruses airborne nature, social distancing has been heavily encouraged, driving us towards a world of virtual experiences.

We’ve seen artists host concerts on Instagram Live, the NBA continue their season through a quarantine bubble, most of our readers are currently working at home over Zoom! The world has drastically changed this year, and we’ve adapted quite well.

However, social distancing has left certain industries in a scramble, mainly the ones that thrive in highly populated environments, universities and museums to name examples. How do these institutionalized operations hastily adapt to the new digital norm?

Today, let’s explore how virtual tours not only ease this transition but also have the potential to quadruple pre - pandemic business.

Bigscreen: Our Virtual Tour Inspiration

Bigscreen: The Burn - In

A few years ago when virtual reality entered the scene, I remember seeing an advertisement for Bigscreen. It was an experiment by Oculus to bring a social cinematic experience to a plug and play virtual reality headset, and boy was it exciting! You could make an avatar, join your friends, and watch a featured presentation. Really cool stuff, but that’s not exactly what got my attention.

Bigscreen Lobby: Road to VR Live

The cinematic experience? Out of this world. Before movies, you’d enter a lobby area outfitted with a box office, concession stand, movie posters, a full arcade, an environment above and beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

And that doesn’t even begin to describe the theatre rooms! We’re talking dynamic cinema environments that change designs to match films, trailers for the early birds, 3D capability, private parties or public showings, this was the virtual environment we never knew we needed.

It was more than just watching a movie with people, and that’s what I loved! You got the full movie theater experience, which is what makes it worth going to movies in the first place! This experience metric is something I believed could be conveyed in all sorts of industries, mainly colleges and museums for the purpose of today’s piece. I encourage checking out this Bigscreen review to fully understand my vision.

What is a Virtual Tour?

Museum Virtual Tour: Simpleview

Short and sweet, a virtual tour is a guided remote experience allowing for immersion and exploration of a location without physically being in said location. They can be created with panoramic images or 3D renderings, and be displayed through various electronic devices, most notably computer screens and virtual reality headsets.

This isn’t new technology and has been used for years by real estate firms, various showrooms, and stores. Despite the tech’s heavy revival due to COVID 19, they aren’t as uncommon as you’d think! If you’ve ever used Google Street View, you’ve been inside a virtual tour!

Virtual tours can be further broken down into three categories; Live tours, self - guided tours, and animated tours.

Live Tours

Live tours are guided by knowledgable industry professionals, who are always ready to ensure questions are answered as they arise. They are also great at making sure everyone is confident before continuing on with the tour.

Self - Guided Tours

Self - guided tours are fully user - controlled, offering high levels of interactivity and movement within the tour environment. They are my favorite tours, and usually contain interactive panels to guide users along.

Animated Tours

Animated tours are fully hands - off, guided by knowledgeable professionals and / or scene annotations. They normally come in the form of videos that can be paused at user discretion. Animated tours are excellent for straightforward spaces that don’t need much explanation.

College Virtual Tours: A Candid Campus Experience

Modern College Campus: imgix

A quick YouTube search is all that’s necessary to confirm “virtual college tours” already exist. Some colleges have recently uploaded these student - guided excursions, while others have had them for years.

They’re not good enough.

They’re rushed, broad, vague, nothing like the on - campus tours they’re meant to replicate. Deciding on where you wish to pursue higher education is a very important decision and as an incoming freshman, utmost detail regarding the layouts of dorms, classrooms, even the campus as a whole is paramount.

Prospective students and parents alike would enjoy digitally rendered live campus tours. They’re a chance to see every inch of the campus firsthand, with an experienced student at the helm to take any questions or concerns that may arise.

But don’t count out self - guided tours! Some incoming freshmen may prefer to freely roam the campus without the constraint of a live tour. It offers the same level of immersion, but at the pace of the user. Annotations can highlight important areas, and questions can simply be emailed.

Most colleges will opt for animated tours, which are by far the easiest to make on our end. Because they are sectored, they offer structured and focused experiences on various areas in the institution, rather than a full - on tour of the entire campus. Since these are usually in video format, they’ll be heavily annotated or narrated, and questions can be directed to comments.

Self - guided and animated tours are best for colleges, mainly because they don’t require much maintenance. Live tours, however, offer an extra dimension of excitement, which goes a long way in the application decision process. We can shorten college tour times from days to hours, and make them safer in these precarious times.

Also, think about the wider array of students that tours will be broadcasted to! These tours will drive application numbers through the roof, creating a potentially infinite investment return.

Museum Virtual Tours: A Digital Cultural Immersion

Louvre Museum: MuseumNext

The Louvre, the Taj Mahal, the Forbidden City; Iconic relics of the past many recommend visiting at least once in your lifetime, but require several hours, if not days of travel from the United States.

Don’t be fooled, this is a two - way sentiment! Travel prevents many from visiting our treasures such as the National Air and Space Museum, or even the Museum of Natural History! Our virtual museum tours promise to finally open these doors, providing the population with a stunning cultural experience minus the staggering travel costs.

Live museum tours will be a patron’s best friend, connecting them with a curator able to not only walk them through the museum but also enlighten them regarding the history and inspirations behind the work, answering any questions to their heart’s desire. As a museum, this personal factor is extremely important.

Self - guided tours allow patrons to explore the museum freely, interacting with the scene through annotations or panels. Animated tours can offer a continuously annotated experience, with the voice and passion of a curator moving the tour along.

Cultural knowledge is very important in today’s society, and our virtual tour museum environments will share this once inaccessible knowledge to millions. Virtual tours will also provide an additional income stream to museums, ensuring they are able to spread this cultural mantra at the utmost ability, as safe as possible.

Hugo Render’s Involvement in the Virtual Tour Sector

The Louvre Abu Dhabi: Conde Nast Traveler

Hugo Render is more than capable of creating virtual tour environments, and we aren’t limited to universities and museums! Instructional navigation is on the rise, and animated tours will greatly transform this sector, whether it’s traversing confusing airports or gargantuan theme parks.

Our renderings, paired with Unreal Engine’s game - like mechanics can build virtual tour environments on a level of photorealism and usefulness never achieved before. Compound virtual reality and 360 - degree imagery into the mix, and we’ve got a recipe for excellence. 

Imagine pairing these virtual tours with platforms such as Zoom, to create safe yet enriching experiences for the entire family, no matter where they reside on the planet! The pandemic threatened to destroy some industries forever; Virtual tours not only provide them with a necessary safety metric but also offer exposure with the potential to make these businesses achieve a level of prosperity never imagined!

Building the Future: Virtual Reality meets Architectural Visualization

How does one remain prominent in the architectural visualization world? Rendering perfection comes to mind. The sense of elation we feel in our clients, the pride of releasing impactful work, it’s unmatched; It’s a sense of belief and empowerment that drives us to constantly innovate and improve.

Allow me to offer a rebuttal; The medium on which renderings are presented plays just as much of a factor as the renderings themselves! The architectural industry is shifting towards experiences that offer unparalleled design immersion, with virtual reality at the forefront of this revolutionary movement! 

Let’s explore exactly what virtual reality is, current offerings in the marketplace, and how we believe virtual reality will change the architectural visualization scene for years to come!

What is Virtual Reality?

Short and sweet, virtual reality is an augmented digital world explored through the use of a headset that encompasses the eyes while projecting a photographic feed. This headset also tracks user movements and interprets said movements through multiple degrees of translation and rotation in the augmented world!

I know, that sounds confusing. Our friends at the Valve team break it down in this video!

Virtual reality provides levels of depth and perception impossible with a monitor or television, but you already knew that. Let’s see the headsets!

Virtual Reality Marketplace Offerings

There are two main types of virtual reality headsets; Smartphone integrated, and standalone units. Let’s begin with arguably the most popular smartphone - compatible headset, the Google Cardboard!

Smartphone Integrated Headsets

Google Cardboard Headset

Virtual reality view of the Google Cardboard VR headset

Google Cardboard Headset Input

View of the mobile phone used to send virtual reality feed to the Google Cardboard Headset

Google Cardboard Demonstration

Demonstration of someone using the Google Cardboard virtual reality headset

Starting around $25, smartphone integrated virtual reality headsets are the cheapest and easiest introduction to VR technology. It’s as simple as buying the cardboard mold, constructing the headset, and viewing the augmented world through a smartphone screen!

The phone’s internal gyroscope tracks head movement, allowing exploration of the virtual world in three degrees of rotational freedom. In layman’s terms, the apparatus only permits looking around in a stationary viewpoint; No walking here.

Smartphone units tend to be a bit uncomfortable, are definitely on the basic side of the market, most don’t even strap to the head, but the mind - blowing multi - dimensional experience is absolutely there. With 44% of the global population owning a smartphone, virtual reality is more accessible than ever before.

For those willing to shell out a pretty penny? Oculus and Valve will deliver.

Standalone Virtual Reality Headsets

Standalone headsets start around $400, with higher end models easily eclipsing $1000. We’re not only talking a fully immersive headset with the bells and whistles, but also controllers to further enhance interactivity. Motion? 6 degrees of translational and rotational freedom; Looking and walking around.

Caveats? Well they’re a lot larger and bulkier than smartphone units, but make up for this with a premier fit and enhanced audio. Standalone virtual reality headsets can be broken down into self or PC powered.

Oculus Quest Virtual Reality Headset: VentureBeat

The most popular self - powered headset on the market is the Oculus Quest, coming in at a relatively reasonable cost of $400. That premium affords the most plug and play system on the market, with access to an extensive library of games, movies, and other countless experiences. I’ve heard the next iteration of the Quest will offer hand - tracking technology without the need for controllers!

Oculus Rift S Virtual Reality Headset: Philly VR

Those seeking a little more juice at the $400 pricetag may consider the Oculus Rift S, the most popular PC powered offering to date. It’s 5 stereoscopic cameras are known for their incredible tracking capabilities!

Valve Index Virtual Reality Headset: Pocket - Lint

Remember our brothers from Valve? The headset from the video is a beta version of the Valve index. The hefty price tag of $1000 is well worth it, offering the widest field of view, incredible audio quality, and best in class comfort. The refresh rate allows for a seamless, latency free experience, while external base station sensors offer unprecedented motion tracking capability.

Awesome tech, but you already knew that, especially if you’ve tried it. Where does architectural visualization come into all of this?

Virtual Reality Architectural Revolution

If you haven’t already read our piece on 360 - degree imagery, do that. Yes, right now. It only takes a minute, I promise.

For those who can’t spare that kind of time, cue the SparkNotes! 360 - degree images stitch multiple images together to create a virtual panoramic environment, explorable through three degrees of rotation. No walking or moving around, a mouse controls the user’s desired viewpoint.

Virtual reality headsets? They replace the mouse altogether! Why not track eyesight with… Natural head movements, the same way we do in real life! Since these are simply 360 - degree images, we can view them on our smartphones as well! See where we’re going with this?

Don’t get me wrong, standalone virtual reality headsets work great with the 360 - degree images too, but with the extra processing power offered, why not transform architectural renderings, these breathtaking scenes, into fully interactive environments!

We’re talking about turning images and animations into full - fledged videogames, permitting clients to walk around and experience spaces as if they’d already been constructed! And don’t forget the real time customization potential a programmed game environment offers! We’re talking the ability to change the texture of a couch, alter the weather, see the environment at night, all with the click of a button! This is an experience clients can’t afford to overlook!

Architectural Virtual Reality in Practice

So, what’s going on right now?

We’ve already got 360 - degree images, view them here!

Epic Games has also taken strides in the VR movement using Unreal Engine, and we plan to follow suit!

Twinmotion, Epic’s dedicated architectural visualization engine, offers insane virtual reality plug and play capability through BIMmotion, a software allowing clients to download scenes, and interact with them like a video game. Twinmotion’s quality isn’t quite to our standards yet, but we’ve been heavily experimenting with the program, and it continues to improve dramatically every year! Check out this BIMmotion demonstration here!

We’ve also got Studio, an integrated Unreal 4 plugin dedicated to the design and development of compelling architectural visualizations. Designing within Unreal 4 gives us that game environment capability I alluded to, permitting those dynamic and interactive elements meant to enhance the virtual reality experience.

Our returning readers also know that Unreal 4 has Quixel 8K material capability!

Our friends at Lunas have experimented with the technology, and the results speak for themselves!

We can all agree the next logical step for architectural visualization is a shift towards increased levels of immersion. Virtual reality offers perception and depth with great potential to achieve this, and we are fully committed to its implementation in the digital rendering marketplace. Hugo Render’s scenes have always been mindblowing, a spectacle in a utopian sea; Virtual reality provides an entirely new and exciting way to appreciate our work.

Unreal Engine 5 will Change Architectural Visualization Forever

Hugo Render is constantly hunting for tools able to help our images carve a distinct path in the expanding digital visualization marketplace, which has led us to investigate 3D gaming engines. Epic Games released a trailer for Unreal 5, their brand - new engine slated to shatter all previous conceptions of not only what architectural renderings can be, but also virtual environments as a whole.

Unreal offers vast improvements in all sectors of the engine, but we’re primarily excited about changes to the texturing mechanics, dynamic lighting, and environmental physics. Let’s start with Nanite!

Texturing: Nanite

Textures bring renderings to life. They give them soul, richness, they provide that extra dimension that truly showcases what a space is slated to become. With the Nanite engine, Unreal promises to render landscapes to a degree never seen before! 

Nanite promises to render billions of triangulated textures in a single frame, with some of these triangles even smaller than pixels. This will not only enhance overall object texture mapping, but will also provide incredible shadow mapping as well!

The rendering engine will allow us to texture objects and generate virtualized geometry to a degree never seen before, allowing us to make a shift towards designing entities with the quality seen in high - budget film CGI through the use of 8K texturing and models.

Still not convinced? Have a look at this cave scene featured in the demo, alongside the texture map created by the Nanite engine! Absolutely insane stuff!

Unreal Engine 5 Nanite View

Nanite texturing view of Unreal Engine 5

Unreal Engine 5 Wireframe

Triangle view of Unreal Engine 5

Nanite is great on its own, but let’s be honest, textures are only as good as the light shining on them; Allow me to introduce Lumen!

Lighting: Lumen

Vision is the most important sense in all our work, and with Unreal’s brand new Lumen engine, we’ll be able to create ocular experiences beyond our client’s wildest dreams. Lumen’s draw is a feature known in the rendering world as “ray tracing”. Allow me to explain.

Most rendering softwares will mimic natural lighting by “baking” it onto objects, essentially imitating reflections through the use of a predetermined light map. This is commonly used in rendering softwares to aid processing power allocation.

Ray tracing allows environment light to behave like a real world electromagnetic wave, using an entirely dynamic system in place of a static map. Ray tracing allows light to more accurately bounce and dissipate off objects, permitting a more authentic texture display.

To understand the raw power of the Lumen engine, check out these three images, along with this clip directly from the Unreal 5 reveal.

Unreal Engine 5 Exterior Environment

Exterior enviornment rendering in Unreal Engine 5

Unreal Engine 5 Cave Environment

Cave environment rendering in Unreal Engine 5

Statues in Unreal Engine 5

Statue renderings in Unreal Engine 5

Lumen will help us gain a much better real - time perception of how lighting in our scenes will behave, creating visuals that are more focused on texture enhancement over scene brightness. Let’s discuss a little environmental physics, shall we?

Environment: Niagra

An environment is the true foundation of a scene. It's a placeholder to enhance architectural development, it’s the world that truly gives a project its photorealistic, life - like quality. With the Niagra engine, Unreal promises to transform these environments into a true, natural oasis.

Niagra gives animated objects the capability to talk with each other, and better understand and interact with their surroundings. Think, a tree, or flock of birds affected by the wind intensity, or even various weather conditions as a whole!

A great demonstration of the engine is seen in this video clip, where Niagra powered fauna (bugs) are reacting to a Lumen powered light source (orb).

Unreal really says it best; Nanite gives you limitless geometry, Lumen gives you fully dynamic lighting to showcase that geometry with. We’ve barely touched the supplementing engines, including Chaos, which all work in conjunction to help us design a constraint - free, densely pixelated environment, on a scale of realism never achieved before. The demo is only a sneak peek of what is to come, and we can’t wait to see what other features arise! Check out the entire demo video and let us know what you think!

Our architectural renderings are stories, experiences portrayed through virtual visualization; Unreal Engine 5 transcends visualization into actuality.

The Importance of Interactive 360 Degree Images in Architecture

Architectural visualization, images and animations transforming conceptual plans to virtual reality. Whether you’re building a fantasy home, envisioning a futuristic landscape, or simply renovating an existing space, no better way exists than 3D rendering to bring the blueprints to life.

City View: Hugo Render

We love our images and animations here at Hugo Render, there’s no questioning that; However, it won’t stop us from finding new cutting edge exciting ways to showcase our architectural projects. The passing years will dramatically improve technology, and we believe that our artwork is simply too beautiful to confine within two dimensions. 

With that being said, 360 degree imagery has allowed us to change the virtual architectural landscape forever. Let’s get right into it!

So what exactly is a 360 degree image? Short and sweet, it’s the perfect marriage between image and animation, with real time interactivity to spice things up.

A 360 degree image stitches several photographs to create a virtual environment, with controls allowing our clients to view said environment from any perspective they please. Instead of seeing our renderings from a predetermined viewpoint, clients are able to rotate the 360 degree image both horizontally and vertically, creating their own instantaneous viewpoints!

Check out these three we made for High Point’s Nido and Mariana Qubein Arena by clicking here!

Don’t get us wrong, virtual images and animations are really great. Our quality and attention to detail with them? Exceptional. But the sense of control and confidence felt in a 360 degree image? Unbeaten. We’re giving our clients the ability to see a project literally through their own eyes, it really doesn’t get more natural than that.

Our 360 degree images can help families devise homes of their wildest dreams, or show builders how a large scale project melds with the cityscape. But it doesn’t stop here!

Conceptual NFL Stadium: Sporting News

2025. Austin, TX. Population? Soaring. NFL franchise considers relocating about 5 miles Northwest of downtown, and drafts plans for an all - new stadium. How do they excite the Austinites? 360 degree image rendered right from the 50 yard line sounds pretty awesome to me. 

We’re literally taking people to places and perspectives they’d most likely never see in their lifetime.

We can make this happen, and we already have! They came out really great, and we’re elated to offer this entirely new dimension to our clients! Architectural rendering used to be about creating a virtual world; Now, it’s about creating virtual worlds we can experience like the real world!