GCX: eXperience: Virtual Walk-a-bout

eXperience: Virtual Walk-a-bout

The GCX Global Virtual Walk-a-bout is a way to traverse the planet through an interlinking series of digital content, panoramic movies and virtual reality locations coordinated together to convey as close to an eXperience of actually "being there." Just as the Australian Aborigine went on their walkabout (sometimes for months or years) as a way to "find themselves" we are using this concept to find a sense of our global self.

Global Community eXperience is developing this navigational tool to share stories through words, photos, video and panoramic movies all coalesced together. The "next dimension" for GCX to integrate is "virtual reality." This will further convey a feeling of connectedness, especially with the invitation of digital content producers from around the world to work together on this project.

GCX presently utilizes two popular panoramic "stitching" technologies, QTVR (Quick Time Virtual Reality) and IPIX (Interactive Pictures.) These technologies are the industry standard.

If you don't see a Panoramic Earth spinning above that means your computer lacks the proper "plug in" for your browser to manage this technology or it is installed incorrectly. We offer brief tutorials and links to the needed plug ins below. If you see the Earth turning continue on...

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For the QTVR Plug In, please click here.

Quicktime VR (QTVR) is an extension of the Apple QuickTime technology. It is used within home pages on the web allowing users to interactively explore and examine realistic three-dimensional virtual worlds by standing inside a visual 360 degree panorama.

It is rather like taping a series of photographs together to make one long, wide panorama, and then taping the two ends of the cylinder together so that the pictures make a circle around the viewer. The resulting QTVR movie can be viewed on the web and is interactively controlled by the user.

By using the computer mouse, the user controls how he/she wants to view the image, how fast and far to rotate the image, and whether to zoom in or out.

After installing your Plug-In you might need to close your browser and open a new one for it to work.

For the IPIX Plug-in please click here.

How to use an IPIX movie : To scroll through the panoramic clip in a 360 degree x 360 degree bubble, click on the mouse while the cursor is over the movie, and drag to left or right, or up and down. To zoom in and out, click on the + or - icon which is located at the center of the IPIX Movie. Hot spot links to other locations appear inside the panoramic movie and can be identified by the cursor changing from a "hand pointing" icon to "2 computers linking" icon. Double click on these locations to access the links to other web locations.

IPIX Problems: If an error message appears, hit the reload (refresh) button or try another "node." Memory problems are sometimes reported. Try another location. If this doesn' t work you might want to bookmark the location, quit the browser and come back to this IPIX movie later.

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