Introduction
The Tour is a non-linear presentation of an area using photographs, essays, and maps. It provides a user with text information about special parts of the area, allows the user to "walkthrough" parts of the area if she/he chooses to, and, if such a tour is on the internet, provides the user links to pages of institutions in that area.
The interactive walkthrough tour, or simply the Tour, has been an ongoing design project of Jack Lange and me for some time. The first Tour began as a hypercard project to document a nature area owned by the Kinkaid School known as the Backyard. Over the summer of 1996 it developed into a system of HTML documents that could be viewed on the internet. Jack Lange and I finished the Kinkaid Upper School tour in May of 1997.
Applications
The interactive walkthrough tour is designed to be used in any location, although places with trails or hallways are easier to do than open spaces; it is just a matter of taking fewer pictures because there are fewer places to walk. Two operational tours are accessbile from the Kinkaid School's web site, the Kinkaid Upper School Tour and theVirtual Tour of Kinkaid's Backyard.
Development Information
We've been developing tours using the MacOS, our favorite programs being BBEdit, Adobe PhotoShop, Helix Express, and some AppleScript programs I wrote myself. For more information on the applescript programs, which I will eventually port to Perl by the way, please go to the tour's software page.
Questions, comments, etc.
For more information, or if you're sending me advice, I'm at hblanks@stic.net.
A word of thanks to the obvious people
Thanks to Cyan/Miller, who created the first decent walkthrough system. Myst was the inspiration for what I've been working on. Thanks to my partners and co-workers, Neil and Jack, who helped me design the first tour of Kinkaid's Backyard, in particular to my good friend Jack, who is still working with me now. Thanks to Jon, Jeff, and Mr. Combs, who provided ideas for the new design features. Particular thanks must go out to Ben Eloy, whose constant advice got the HTML version of the project going. And finally, thanks to Ms. Leathem, who offered an extra credit project, and thus made us start the Tour in the first place.
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