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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Took a lovely hike up Lions Head yesterday.
If you haven’t done it before – it’s a brilliantly beautiful walk with views all around.
And the view from the top ….. well, you can judge for yourself:

Remember to click on the full screen icon – top right.

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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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If you’re a regular here at Virtual Africa, you would know that we have a soft spot for World Heritage Sites.

We’ve had the privilege to shoot all 8 South African World Heritage Sites on behalf of South Africa Tourism a few years ago, but when the good people of the African Heritage Epic approached us with their grand idea, we quickly learnt that the first round was just a warm up.

We couldn’t believe our luck:

Their passion was to capture 55 (yes, FIFTY FIVE!!!) African heritage sites in the best ways possible!!

As part of the African Heritage Epic they’re busy creating documentaries, aggregating literature, making video’s and writing books about anything and everything that has anything to do with these amazing African sites.
But not only are they doing the research, they’re planning to visit each of these sites and have started doing so already.
Now it might sound like a small thing, but I’ll give you consider that the Aldabra Atoll 1200km South West of the Seychelles main island, Mahe, is one of the sites and the Valley of the Kings in Egypt is another – you realize why they call it the EPIC.

Anyway, our part in this is to help capture the sites in glorious 360º and we’ve been doing just that for the past few months.

We are happy to announce that the first 6 sites have been completed.

We have created 25 full screen 360º images of each of the heritage sites, each image with an embedded video clip to tell you more about what you’re seeing. (That’s a whopping 150 scenes, for those who are reaching for the calculators.)

In the light of September being Heritage month and 24 September, South African Heritage Day, it’s the perfect time to start sharing the ‘fruits of our labour’ with the world.

And where better to begin, than the beginning: The Cradle of Humankind.

Very important for maximum coolness: click on the square in the top right corner of the virtual tour below, also, click on the icon next the the gentleman to hear what he has to say.

Remember to subscribe to Virtual Africa, by dropping you email address in the space allocated to the right.
This will allow you to get updates on the other 150 images we have to share…..

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Seeing that we’re busy with a series on South African sport stadiums, I thought I’d share this panoramic image taken at the recent rugby test match between South Africa and Australia at Newlands Rugby Stadium.

I created it without a tripod – so the standard is not as high as usual – but it does give one an idea of ‘life on the Railway Stand’.

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South Africa is getting itself ready for the 2010 Soccer World Cup and all around the country we see magnificent new sport stadiums rising in preparation for what promises to be a spectacle of note.

Seeing that Virtual Africa has had the privilege to shoot quite a few of the existing (and even a few of the new) stadiums, we thought it to be a good time to write a few posts on some of our brilliant sporting facilities.
This then is our series on: South African Sport Stadiums in 360º.

First up is my personal favourite: NEWLANDS RUGBY STADIUM

Above we have a Google Map with integrated 360º virtual tours of both the rugby and cricket stadiums -two of the most majestic and historic sports grounds in the world.

Seeing that it’s winter, we zoomed in on Newlands Rugby, but simply pan a block to the South to find the cricket stadium – with some 360º virtual tours of its own.

Instructions:
1. Click on the icons in the map to see 360º images
2. then on the ‘Go Full Screen’ link to see the good stuff.
3. zoom out to explore 360º images of the rest of Cape Town
4. click on the ‘ShareThis” button below to share the map with your online community
5. subscribe to receive a notification of our next post, Greenpoint Stadium

For a bigger version of this map, click on Google Maps in the top menu bar of this site.

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We recently had an opportunity to interview and photograph Simon Back from Backsberg Wine Estate near Paarl.

Simon took us on a tour of the estate and gave us a glimpse of what it entails to be a environmentally conscious farmer in the 21st century.
He showed us ‘Footprint Park”, their Eucalyptus Research and a very interesting Parabolic Reflector they are experimenting with.

It was great to see someone who genuinely cares for the environment and who has obviously been putting a lot of time, effort and money into doing their bit as responsible farmers.

The virtual tour below we created has embedded video in it.

It’s a relatively new way of doing it and we think it works well to communicate information.
Click on the video icon in the virtual tour to see what Simon has to say and use the drop down menus to go to other scenes.
You’ll find more videos in “Eucalyptus Research” and “Conservancy Projects” spins.

Go to the Backsberg website for more information on their wines, the estate, the wedding venue, the restaurant and some general news on what they’re up to on a day to day basis.

We have some more content which we created for Backsberg and we’ll be sharing some of it here in the coming months.
Simply drop your email address to the right, to get automatic updates on when something new is posted.

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