Hello all!
I apologize for this being blogged so late! Here are few of things I've found over the past few weeks. I will soon write another entry with more :)
For starters, here is a virtual museum of some world's ancient wonders, including an ancient Aztec temple (similar to our project! :D), the Parthenon in Ancient Greece, and La Maison Carree in Nimes, France. It's pretty cool! You can take a tour the site in either 'walk' mode or 'study' mode and as you approach different important locations, educational information about the building/site appears. In the walking mode, the camera is brought down to eye-level and you see the buildings and structures from the view of a person actually walking around the site. The 'study' mode brings the camera up in the air, as if from inside a helicopter, and you study the site grounds from above. Using your arrow keys on your keyboard, you navigate around the site. Each site is not that big but it seems all the major points have been hit. As you navigate, if there is a particularly important or significant building, as I have stated before, educational excerpts appear in the black panel on the bottom of the window. These excerpts are not very detailed and seem to state only a couple facts (perhaps because of limited space?). In the tour of the Aztec temple, I found it a bit annoying how there is not much indication as to which building will have more information provided and which are just there for display (not all structures come with facts in the tour). For the Parthenon or La Maison Carree, the tour is just of the one structure. I found it a bit amusing that, apparently, one can walk through walls in France. ;) But there is not much in the actual building. Similarly, the Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu's pyramid is pretty empty inside. As you walk in, it seemed like a real tour with information as you're lead through the hallway-like stretch, but once inside the temple, the tour ends. I tried to see if there was more on the opposite site of the temple but I got lost in all the little empty chambers....
Apparently, the Vikings walked on water and could also walk through walls! And the 3D Chariot artifact tour is not so much a tour but just a way to view the relic from all angles.
In the Aztec tour, to view the information, you have to 'walk' up very close to the structure. They used Adobe Shockwave and, if you do not already have it, you need to download Flash. I'm not sure if it is just because my internet is slow, but it took me quite some time to load the "tour" and feedback was very slow. In any case, the site in general does not provide extensively detailed information about each site and this virtual tour cannot take the place of an actual museum. But, with more time, the tours could be much more informational with more artifacts and people actually in the tours. Still, I enjoyed the site and I did learn from their little excerpts.
Esimple Studios is a company that develops platforms for clients like Heineken, Apple, General Electric, etc. I tried the GE tour. They made a virtual tour of an actual dealership. (dl Unity Web Player to view). There is not much displayed. Behind the customer service desk (?) there are some links that bring up pop-ups with what I can only guess to be more information. I cannot say for sure though (I've never studied Italian). The rest of the gallery shows pictures of beautiful cars and, when you point your cursor at the pictures, basic information about the car appears (click for more details). As I am not looking for any cars, it was an opportunity for me to see some low-quality pictures of some Audis, Alfa Romeos, Renaults, etc. :D still pretty, despite the low quality~~ Oh! and the building is very very cool. I am not much of an architect but I approve of the building. This video was made to be used on the GE website as an additional experience for potential buyers.
ES also built shopping and strip malls, games for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch, and a quiz-style application for online shopping through social networking sites (i.e. Facebook) that provides you with items you might like at the end of the quiz and links to sites that sell the products. If you go to the link I provided, it takes you the the company's portfolio and when you click on each product, most come with videos that show what the company did for each client. Most of which are not very relevant but still I wanted to share this because this is one company that put 3D animation and modeling to use on the internet and through other technologies like smart phones.
Here is a link to an exhibition in Europe called the KIOSK Europe Expo. The website does not provide much information but I was looking through museums throughout the world that are striving to be more innovative and technology-forward in their exhibitions and many use Kiosks and touch screens to provide information, rather than the traditional placard or pre-recorded audio tours. Kiosks allow for the visitors to have a more personalized tour and can provide more information than a simple placard but still have the feel of the more traditional museums, somewhat. This Expo is for businessmen and professionals seeking solutions in these Kiosks for their businesses. I only post this because, under "Exhibition" > "Solutions", Museums, Exhibitions, Travel & Tourism, and Education are listed. and I'd like to go! it sounds interesting~ Anyone else up for a trip to Europe for the 2012 Expo? ;)
3D Exhibits is a company that serves clients in helping with designing exhibits for trade shows. Again, not completely relevant to our job but I thought it would help with ideas for how to use a space. There are some cool shows that they put up and they succeeded in putting a lot into the small space while not making it look too cluttered or messy. If you have the time, please look through them. especially the one they did for Nintendo. I think something like that could be used for our exhibition. The way they have the walls on the inside as large screens to show more general shots and then smaller stations, each with a computer, for visitors' personal viewing pleasure.
Here are some other links to view (again more to come~):
* The Science Museum in London has a new atmosphere gallery. They say that the expected duration of one's visit is only about 30 minutes. short in my opinion but it is very cool. They implemented different mediums to get information out to the visitors, such as, games, models, interactive displays, etc. Also, they used a combination of both touch screen monitors and plaques throughout the gallery to give information, which I think was smart.
* This is a summary of a survey conducted in January 2009 to museum-goers asking how they preferred to visit museums. A list of answers, such as, guided tours with actual guides, self-guided tours, etc. would follow. At outdoor history museums, visitors under the age of thirty were actually the least likely to want the galleries to utilize technology; while people over the age of seventy were most likely to seek out technology. Note, not a single age group was particularly enthusiastic about tech in museums in general. I do not think this is that significant (if you read the article, the survey was not very well done but it should be noted that the question was not exclusive to science museums). Just thought the results were interesting and thought I'd share. If you have the time, the article is an interesting read (and so are the comments!).
* Here is another link for those of you with some time. a presentation given by Dr. Heather King of King's College London outlining obstacles and uses of technology in museums as of April 2003.
Ok, as for projectors, I've spent a lot of time learning about different types of projectors, how they work, how they are used, etc. For everybody's viewing pleasure and convenience, I am putting together a googledoc with basic description of the different types of projectors as well as prices, specs, etc. of a couple models of each projector. I have all of the information and am working on putting together this doc so it is still a work in progress but here is the link to the doc for you to see what I've got done so far. will continue working on next week! :)
Any questions, please comment! I'll try to answer as best I can.
Please let me know what you think as well~
Best and Very Respectfully,
-Seungyeon Lee
P.S. I hope everybody enjoys 4th of July! I will, most likely, be back in Philadelphia by Monday but since I still do not have card access to the lab, I am hoping someone will be in the lab to let me in!
No comments:
Post a Comment