How to use this tour

Taking a Virtual Reality Tour
A Virtual Realty (VR) Tour allows you to explore a series of linked panoramic images that allow 360 degree of horizontal viewing with limited capability of upward and downward mobility. Unlike a video or a still photograph, a virtual tour allows you to move these images around at your pace and change your ventage point by clicking and dragging the curser directly on them. In this tour of the Integration Test Facility Center for CHP for buildings at the Administration building of the University of Maryland, there are more than a dozen different view points, and more than ten places where you can zoom in on objects for closer inspection.

Within the VR Tour window, target icons indicate where the links to the different viewing points and zoom-inspection points are located. Click on them, to view those locations. The VR Tour map can be used to see where you currently are in a tour (your location is indicated in yellow), or you can click on the map links to hop around to those points. By clicking on the name lables for the different pieces of equipment in the tour, you can go directly to their inspection views.

Inspection Views

Certain views in the tour will allow you to inspect the inside of a piece of equipment or see an unusual perspective. To navigate in these views, click and drag on the hexagon-shaped icon. If the icon is on the top-right hand side of the screen, click and drag up and down on the image. If the icon is on the top-left of the image drag the icon to the right and left. Use your browser's "back" button to return to the panorama you were viewing prior to the inspection view, or use the map.

Sound

In some panoramas you can hear the actual sounds of the equipment. To silence the sound, use the sound control on the bottom left of the VR Tour window.

Movement

To move quickly about the panoramas, click on the opposite side of the panorama from the direction you'd like to move in. While still keeping the mouse button depressed, move the cursor in the direction you'd like to look. The further from the original click-point you drag your mouse, the faster the panorama will move. For slower movement, reduce the movement of the mouse.

Requirement

To view the VR Tour, you must install Apple's QuickTimeVR plug-in. For help installing a free or other versions of the QuickTimeVR plug-in software, please refer to Apple's Website at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download