When you work in the virtual tour business, you have the privilege to witness technological advances almost daily.
But every once in a while these changes combine to create an effect that can only be described as a Game Changer.
Today we are proud to share such an culmination of technological advances.

For a lack of a better word: we’ll call it a Hyper Definition Virtual Tour , but before we get to the technical details, have a look at it:

Virtual Africa presents: The highest definition picture ever taken of Cape Town.

It might not look like much on first glance, but try the following and be ready to be blown away: click on the full screen button (bottom right) and then ZOOM !!

Some details as to the size of this image:

• It was created by stitching 1850,fully zoomed (x 20 optical zoom), 10 MegaPixel images together.
• The time it took from the first shot (top left) and last shot (lower right) being taken, was about 3 hours.
• It’s 205 000 pixels wide.
• That equates to a printout of about 90 m x 15 m!
• The end result was a 25 GigaBytes RAW file which takes about an hour to open on my Macbook Pro.

Despite the size of the image, you can view it here because of a method called ’tiling’.

It works exactly the same way as mapping platforms such as Google Maps.

for example: When you view the whole of South Africa in Google Maps, the image obviously does not contain the high detail imagery of every roof top in the country. It’s only when you start zooming in, that Google Maps loads the relevant information.

The same happens here. We’ve taken our very big picture and created hundreds of thousand lower definition pictures (or tiles) from it. As you zoom into the picture, the only the appropriate tiles are loaded and this allows you to explore a very large image on a relatively slow internet connection. Simple, but smart.

In the coming months we hope to use images like these to organize data, visually.

Once again, similar to Google Maps, we can overlay information on top of this image to further enhance your exploration of Cape Town and the good news is that we are currently working on a few projects which will allow us to do just that.

In the mean time, we would love to hear your suggestions as to what we should call this kind of image/virtual tour…..

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Most people have heard of Fynbos.

We know it’s unique, we don’t always understand why, but we like the look of proteas and believe the experts when they say it’s important to conserve and protect these plants. Even UNESCO has pitched in by declaring the Cape Floral Kingdom a World Heritage Site.

One of the lesser know floral classification within this Kingdom of ours is called: Renosterveld (translate: ‘Renoster’ = Rhino; ‘veld’=  bush/plain/plants).

There are only a few pockets of Renosterveld left in the Western Cape and in this panorama, Justin Basson, the owner of Clara Anna Fontein and passionate Renosterveld conservationist, shows us some of the unique flora and fauna associated with the Renosterveld.

For me, the highlights of the video include the carnivorous plant and parrot beak tortoise.

(click and drag to look around and click on the video icon to see what Justin has to see)

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Ok, I have to admit it in a public space: I, Tinus le Roux, grew up in Camps Bay, Cape Town, at the foot of the famous Table Mountain.

Now, if you haven’t been to Camps Bay, you won’t understand why most of those readers who have, just had a negative emotional response toward me.

If I take my life of reactions to this tidbit of useless information as a guide, most of them would think one or both of the next two things:

1. “Ahhh ….. rich kid” or
2. “You privileged little ………”

The irony of growing up in paradise though, is that you don’t have the capacity to realize it.
You don’t know anything else – it’s just how it works.
(The other reality not many people take into account, is that Camps Bay of 30 years ago, was not the ‘playground of the rich and famous’ as it is today”.  Yes, Madonna and Sting do have houses there , but I know for a fact that my high school science teacher also still lives in The Bay  – and we know what they earn.)

This is the view from an top of Table Mountain.
(click here to see a full screen version of this panoramic image)

Anyway, why all this rambling about where I grew up?

Well, it’s quite simple…….I spent my childhood playing in one of the most amazing, most important places of natural beauty and biodiversity in the world, and I never knew or appreciated it.

The fact is, 20% of all floral species in Africa are found in the Cape Floral Kingdom.
It only takes up about 0.5 % of the African landmass, but 1 in 5 species of plants are found in a series of 8 protected area’s in and around Cape Town – my backyard.
Table Mountain alone has more floral species than the British Isles.

The point is this: as I was oblivious to the importance of things I accepted as ‘everyday’, so many South Africans, like me, are oblivious to the wonder and importance of this country we have the privilege of calling our ‘backyard”.

My hope is that the next few posts, which will look at the 8 South African World Heritage sites, will help cultivate a greater appreciation of the privilege of visiting and or living in South Africa.

14 years after Apartheid, the people living in this beautiful country are struggling to find a collective identity a history they can all claim and be proud of.

The South African  World Heritage sites can help us because they are more than 8 interesting spots on a map -they represent very real and very important stories.

Stories of the first ‘ape-men’ surviving in the caves near Johannesburg.
Stories of the Nama people of the Richtersveld, still living the way they did 2000 years ago.
Stories of an ancient golden rhino, the biggest meteor crater in the world and people sitting in an island prison because the stood up for equality.

• Have you been to Robben Island?
  • (take a virtual tour of Nelson Mandela’s prison cell.)
• Do you know why the Richtersveld is a cultural heritage site?
  • (see the 360º images and interactive map)
• Do you know where Mapungubwe is why it is important? (take the virtual tour)
• Do you know where Maropeng is or why it is the Cradle of Humankind?

South Africa is a wonderful, wonderful place and we invite you to discover a small part of it – with us.

In the coming weeks we will publish maps and interactive images of each of the 8 South African World Heritage Sites.

We will do our best to (virtually) take you there and give you a feel for each of these extremely interesting places.

We will share links to more information, video’s and stories and ask you to share these with friends and family in an effort to spread the ‘gospel’ of being Proud Africans.

(If you like to receive email notifications every time we post – simply type your email address in the space provided at the top right of our home page.)

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