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Company: 360fusion
Project: Parliament Virtual tours

http://www.360fusion.co.uk/house_of_commons_virtual_tour.phtml

Dates: May 2007 to Oct 2007

How did the project start?

I was approached by Parliament to submit a tender to create a virtual tour of the House of Commons Chamber. After a lot of research and writing I submitted the tender and won the contract.

What options did you consider?

The main options considered for this project were the different kinds of format delivery and development methods. I mainly use off the shelf virtual tour software to build and compile virtual tours, this software has limited in features and couldn’t embed video in a virtual tour interface of have tabs form different media relating to each panorama or hotspot close up. Most software streams video in the default media player or links to a webpage. I teamed up with an experienced Flash programmer and we created our own virtual tour software in Adobe Flash which could be adapted to create any function the client wanted. This gave us a massive amount of flexibility and when the client made a request for functionality the answer was usually yes. We couldn’t have created this tour with any existing product on the market. We delivered the project in Flash 9 as it is more people have it and it is easier to install than java.

What help and expertise did you receive?

Whilst writing the tender I sought professional help, It was the first tender I had ever written so knew nothing of executive summaries or format. Getting professional to help enabled me to words the document correctly and explain the way I would deliver the project technically in the terms the client would understand.

Did you face any challenges or learn any lessons?

The main challenge was creating the bespoke virtual tour player in Flash. This was pretty much new technology and it wasn’t until flash 9 and AS3 came out that this could have been done. Flash 9 had luckily just been released when we started the project. Getting up to speed with it was a challenge.

What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?

Winning this contract and having such a reputable client on my portfolio gives my work instant credibility, the standard of the tour and the features in it that are not available in other virtual tours really sets it apart from the rest. The tour of the commons chamber shows the full potential of virtual tours and all the different kinds of multimedia that can be incorporated in them to crate a fully interactive experience that can guide and teach people about Parliament.

What are your plans for the future?

Future plans are to develop this software further and get more high profile work with large companies. Being able to create tours packed full of information with lots of audio, video and hot spots is what drives 360fusion. There are plans to add features such as linking YouTube video and live webcam feeds as video options too.