This is an early announcement of our VR field trip project with the University of British Columbia (UBC). The project hasn’t been released to the public yet, but I thought we’d share our results from our photogrammetry capture.

In March 2017, we were contacted by the University to consult their team of students and professors on creating a virtual reality field trip experience. As consultants to the project, we lead the team and created a workflow that fitted their busy schedules, all the while documenting the entire process for the University. We also assisted in the development of the code base and photogrammetry assets.

The idea behind the VR project was to capture one of our provincial treasures here in British Columbia—Stanley Park—with as much realism as possible.

We used an advanced imaging technique called photogrammetry to accomplish this. We’ve captured Prospect Point (a site within Stanley Park) in stunning detail by taking thousands upon thousands of photos. RealityCapture was used to process the 20,000+ photos, and hundreds of hours have been put into their processing.

Here’s Prospect Point in Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/NguBQ2s5RpR2

Here are our early photogrammetry results:

Below are renderings of the photogrammetry model from RealityCapture: 

Below are real-time screenshots of the VR experience in Unity

Screenshots of projects within Reality Capture:

 

We’ve already demoed our early builds at educational conferences. We’ll be releasing more details on the project in the coming months. Stay tuned!