The Lismore Visitor Information Centre (VIC) recently revamped their indoor model rainforest walk into a vibrant, interactive display, featuring murals.

I’m calling this Real Virtuality (RV). Real in that it’s a physical installation; Virtual in that it’s emulating a rainforest. (Note: Wikipedia uses the term differently.)

To enjoy the RV experience though visitors need to visit the Visitor Information Centre. This implies the visitor is already physically in the area, and they have to take time out of their visit to find out what to do during their visit. Normally you would not expect the purpose of a visit to be checking out the local Visitor information Centre; rather to walk through a real rainforest.

Instead of spending $120,000 to refurbish an RV, let’s consider how this could be used to develop a Virtual Reality (VR) experience. This could include:

• Enriching Google Maps with local knowledge
• Creating StreetView panoramas into the local rainforests
• Adding web-mapping interactive content, such as historical or site-specific photos and local stories

This might’ve all been possible for less than $120,000, and encouraged an open-knowledge community-approach to tourism. Plus it could benefit the local population and students wherever they are, and possibly encourage them to access the real rainforest.

Advantages:

1. Openness - encourage local community to contribute and update content
2. Reachability - available to all visitors with an internet connection (including people in the VIC)
3. Cost - low on-going hosting fees (depending on services used; need to consider cost of authorised content changing)
4. Updatability - content can be easily modified

Disadvantages:

1. Copyright and privacy issues (of uploaded panoramas)
2. Limited viewing space (user-dependent mobile devices; but they can always ask for a real map at the VIC where large screen interactive displays are installed)

Maybe this could be a future direction. What would you want in a virtual Visitor Information Centre?