Black Country Living Museum

Now, this one was a whole lot of fun to produce for the Black Country Living Museum! The Brief?: to replicate, as a virtual tour, the guided tour around this Victorian mine whilst it was closed for nearby building work. It may look like it is deep underground but it is, in fact, only a couple of feet underground – entirely man-made using huge square concrete storm drain sections. The museum was about to start work nearby piling foundations for a new building so they had to close the popular attraction at the museum for safety reasons.

The actual guided tour includes ‘piped in’ narration at specific sections of the tour as well as background sound effects (water dripping, hammer & chisel noises) and video, so we incorporated all these elements into the virtual tour to create a truly immersive experience. You will definitely need speakers for this tour: preferably stereo, as the noise moves as you look around. You start outside the coal mine building, watch an introductory video and then take the guided (and narrated) tour through the whole mine. It was a lot of fun to photograph one Summer’s evening when the museum was closed. Technically challenging too because, whilst most of the mine was almost pitch black, the exhibits and mannequins were brightly lit.

• Unique, bespoke User Interface designed around the client branding.
• Stunning, high-definition, high-resolution panoramas throughout.
• Virtual tour published in HTML5 so is browser driven (no need for plugin downloads like Flash or Java).
• VR ready: view the tour in Virtual Reality using popular VR headsets like Google Cardboard or Oculus Go & Quest.
• Mobile-responsive and optimised for viewing on all current platforms: PC, iOS, Android, Mac, etc.
• HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography technique evens the lightest and darkest areas of the scene, so you won’t see ‘blown out’ windows or loss of detail.
• ‘White Label’, unbranded service available.