Capturing Bryce Canyon’s Visitor Center in VR
Immersive Journeys: Unveiling the Wonders of Bryce Canyon National Park in Virtual Reality
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View of Bryce Canyon National Park Museum VR Tour
Project Overview
Utah is know for its amazing national parks. Home to Bryce Canyon and many others, these parks are governed by the National Parks Service (NPS). The goal of the NPS is to “preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.” This goal also includes creating accessibility for persons of all abiliities, along with providing people around the world the ability to explore the Park from a distance. To accomplish this, I served as the Virtual Reality (VR) Experience Designer, capturing footage and processing it for the Bryce Canyon National Parks Visitor Center.
My Role: Virtual Reality (VR) Experience Designer
Pictured: Professor Hatch and myself processing lighting
Goals
The objective of the National Park Service (NPS) was to capture immersive VR footage of Bryce Canyon National Park, specifically focusing on the Visitor Center, in order to enable a broader audience to experience the park's captivating stories. In pursuit of this goal, our team played a pivotal role in co-authoring an Engaged Learning Grant that underscored the advantages arising from the partnership between the NPS and Utah Valley University (UVU). This grant effectively highlighted how this collaboration would facilitate the authentic portrayal of the unique Bryce Canyon experience. With the invaluable support of our team, esteemed Professor Dan Hatch, and generous funding from Rocky Mountain Power, we embarked on an expedition to Bryce Canyon, meticulously capturing the breathtaking footage.
VR Image Processing Software (Left to Right): Photomatix, Pano2VR, PTGUI, PhotoShop, Affinity Photo, LightRoom
VR Image Processing
The process for creating a panorama begins by first joining 16 images through High Definition Reality (HDR) software called Photomatix. The resulting 4 images are then joined into a 360 degree panorama using PTGui. The 360 degree images are then processed through LightRoom to balance the exposure and make sure the lighting didn’t change from node to node. Next I had to edit out the overexposed areas and patch in the down shot using the patch tool in Affinity Photo. I then utilized a map of the Visitor Center to place all the 360 images or nodes in place using a program called Pano2VR. Lastly, we added hot spot popups for the nodes that allowed for users to click on areas of interest and see more detail and information. These image and video popups helped in areas that where overexposed, so users could be able to read the signs in the Visitor Center.
Project Results
By the end of the project, we were able to solve the NPS’s accessibility problem by having a navigable 3d tour of the Bryce Canyon Visitor Center. The project helped solve the issue of accessibility to the Park’s Visitor Center. Additionally the project helps those who don’t have time to visit all of the Park to see it in Virtual Reality.
Takeaways
If I was to do the project again, some of the things I would change is working with overexposed images. If the images had been darker, they could have been lightened in LightRoom or PhotoShop, without the images being blown out. Additionally, I would have liked to have gotten a workable gallery feature at least on desktop. The project also helped me to understand taking a project from conception through production, to post production and hand off to the next leg of the project. In doing so, it helped me to understand how to create handoff material for those who are working on finishing the footage of the other tours that were taken at Bryce Canyon.