Campus Narvik

Virtual Site Exploration

Lets travel to see beauty of souls in new landscapes
Arslan Hamid
Hu Junsheng
Bjarne Steinulv Jensen
Mubesh Giri
Afsa Iteba
Muhammad Ahmad Naqvi

Abstract

Traveling industry is a growing market. But in our eyes, there is a lot of problems that limit it
is development and also constrains peoples abilities of enjoying it. This project is aim to use
VR technology to make the world easier to access, to help tourists to explore where they want
to explore use a minimum time and money, to help tourist sites to deliver as many as possible
people what they offer, and in the meantime make this industries much more environmental
friendly.

It is really a revolution of the society of peoples holiday life. It has a huge potential.

Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 4
Inspiration................................................................................................................................................ 6
Ideas .................................................................................................................................................... 8
Value proposition: ............................................................................................................................... 8
Where do you see this generating cash? .............................................................................................. 8
How did you arrive at you final idea? ................................................................................................. 9
Constraints and problems that can arise .............................................................................................. 9
Prototyping .............................................................................................................................................. 9
Product Market: ..................................................................................................................................... 13
Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 13
References ............................................................................................................................................. 14

Introduction
Tourism has turned out to be a very important industry in the modern age. It has been moving
with the wild pace of technological advancements and bringing people from different places
and cultures interacting with increasing ease.
Tourism as one of the biggest and fastest growing industries globally, its benefits and
challenges. Sustainable tourism has three interconnected aspects, it is economic, socio-cultural
and environment.
The positive effects of tourism on a countrys economy include the growth and development
of various industries directly linked with a healthy tourism industry, such as transportation,
accommodation, wildlife, arts and entertainment.
In the quest to provide facilities for tourists, the environment has been affected in other ways,
large hotels and other facilities for tourists and likes consume large amounts of power in their
quest to provide a long list of patrons with all the hip electronic comforts.
The tourist themselves face several difficulties in their quest for, journey and stay in these
foreign lands, such as the sometimes trying searching for visas and the duration of stay
permitted by the host country.
The environment, being the major source of tourist product, should therefore be protected in
order to have further growth of tourism and economic development in the future. This is
especially true with a regard to tourism based on the natural environment as well as on
historical cultural heritage.
Every year millions of people address the travel agencies asking for help to choose place to
spend their vacations.
Within a few year, seeing the world could be taken on a whole new meaning. A company
called aerospace has devised a plan that would allow tourists to fly high into the stratosphere,
admiring the curvature of the earth from above. Tucked inside a tiny space capsule, passengers
would be lifted to a height of around 30 Km by balloon. After a two hour sightseeing session,
the capsule would be released and glide back to earth with a parachute. Unfortunately, ticket
prices are much higher than tradition two hour flight.
The change in travelling pattern is characterized by increasingly sophisticated travelers who
are experienced, well-educated and discriminating consumers who are more aware of what
time have to be spent for travelling and cost of being travel to particular planned destination
for vacations.
Such tourists are becoming less destination- oriented and more experience-oriented. This
transformation into an experience market is based on personalized services and customized
holidays that allow visitors to play a more active role in their travelling experiences and search
continually for new tourism products.
Here we came with an idea which interesting: a travel show presented in virtual reality,
allowing home or deskbound tourists to experience new places without actually travelling.
People that will become a virtual tourist would be able to visit different places before visiting

them to make sure that will be the right place for them, therefore this concept will be allowing
a preview of a destination, which may enhance customer satisfaction.
See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask for
no guarantees, ask for no security.

VR has two major usages in the Travel industry: Inspiration and Demonstration.

Problem description
Nowadays, traveling is a very low cost efficient and time consuming. People spend too much
money, time and energy on the way to their destinations instead of enjoying the sites. This low
efficient constrains the development of the traveling industry.
Human are curious about the world and eager to explore it, but their time and economy dont
allow.
There are also lots of people who could not go to explore the world because of their health
conditions.
As to the sites itself, they are also facing problems such as too much tourist which make the
sites crowded, following with security and environment problems. However, they are greedy to
have more tourist to have more profits. Its very hard for them to make a balance.
The real world is limited, by that I mean there is lots of things that we could not see any more,
for example the summer palace, you can just stand in front of the destroyed site to image how
it was hundreds years ago.
As to the sites itself, they are also facing problems such as too much tourists which make the
sites crowded, following with security and environment problems. However, they are greedy to
have more tourists to have more profits. Its very hard for them to make a balance.

As to the world, traveling increase the pollution due to the traffic, building of hotels and
restaurants. Tourists sometime can give some damage to the historical items.
Image you are in a family with one or a few children, they are so curious about the world and
are desired to travel around the world and experience everything. Parents really want to support
them, however they have to think about the time and money that costs. The family finally decide
to go to china to show them The great wall and summer palace during next east-holiday. So
they have to prepare the visa, money, air tickets, hotels and so on. In the first day, they spend
more than 24 hours to fly to Beijing(capital of china). After landing, when they are already
exhausted, they have to be in a long queue to wait for a taxi. Finally, after having stood in the
wind with polluted dirty air and heavy luggage for almost half an hour, they get in a taxi. They
are facing language problems. Then they have to use roaming data from the telephone service
to translate. They arrived the hotel in the midnight of the evening and dont have too much time
to sleep because they have to get up early to catch the bus to The great wall, but at 3:00 am, one
kid starts to cough.

After being there for sightseeing for a few days, everyone is so exhausted, and they still need
to fly more than 20 hours to go back home. Then they realized it is so good to be at home.
The father is an industry engineering engineer. When he share this experience with colleagues,
he realized that they spent 4 days on the way, while spent 3 days in Beijing. They spent 25,000
NOK on the journey and accommodations, while spent 2000 NOK on the food and 1300 NOK
on the tickets of the sites. Very low cost efficiency.

Inspiration
What if we can visit different places without traveling a far distance? What if we make
something like a portal which can send people anytime anywhere?
We know some kind of thing is happening, companies record the sound of nature and people
can hear them at home, companies record movies and take pictures of the sites so we can see
them at home. Just they are not so real. What if we can make it feels like real? There is a
coming technology called Virtual Reality. This can help.
Virtual reality has been particularly difficult to define over the years. Many people take
"virtual" to mean fake or unreal, and "reality" to refer to the real world.
Virtual Reality (VR) is stimulating the users senses in such a way that a computer made world
is experienced as real. In order to get a true illusion of reality, it is essential for the user to
have impact on this virtual environment.
All that has to be done in order to raise the illusion of being in or acting upon a virtual world
or virtual environment, is providing a simulation of the interaction between human being and
this real environment. This simulation is at least partly attained by means of Virtual Reality
interfaces connected to a computer. Basically, a VR interface stimulates one of the human
senses.
Virtual reality is the use of computer technology to create the effect of an interactive threedimensional world in which the objects have a sense of spatial presence.
"Spatial presence" means the objects in the environment efficiently have a location in threedimensional space relative to and independent of your position.
Virtual reality devices, such as the Oculus and the Samsung VR Headset, are dignified to
transform several sectors of the economy over the coming year, including gaming, cinema,
but the latest industry looking to exploit the latest in experience tech is the travel business.
The Travel and Tourism industry, its just huge part of our economy (Karen Hughes)

Picture 1: Travelling tends to magnify all human emotions through VSE

Virtual reality, are going to change the way many of the things that is done today and important
areas are transformed, like tourism.
The big opportunity for VR will be helping consumers make decision about where to travel
by showing a selection of the surroundings from different traveling destinations. It can be
especially valuable for destinations that may not have a top-tier attraction with a lot of name
recognition, but has great natural cultural attractions that can give travelers confidence that
this is the place to go.

Picture 2: A screenshot of the introduction trailer for Magic leap.

This website will enables us to convey the intensity and emotion of the travel experience
before the journey has even started. Travelers are then better able to decide which excursions
they want to book.

Ideas
As the word stated in the project as "virtual" which means having the quality of something
without sharing its physical form. By using the concept of VSE (virtual site exploration) we
are making the world smaller to every group of people.
The project is based on virtual exploration of different sites or heritages, where people are
dreaming of traveling to in their lifetime. We believe VSE could make their dreams come true
in limited time and budget. So, basically the project provides public opportunities to view
present and past sites and heritages all round the world according to their desire.

Value proposition:
The VSE is the best solution for those who want to travel often and do not want to have bad
experience of that particular place after the visit.
The VSE can be the best solution for the people with low income, who do want to travel selected
places. But of their economic condition, they are not able to do so.
It could be the best solution for those high income communities, who do want to visit different
places. They can have a pre-visit to know what sorts of experience they would get in that
particular trip. Then, he could be fully committed to make his trip to a specific favorite places.
It could also be the best solution for those who have health issues, who have problem in
traveling.
It could be the best solution for those country sites and heritages, which securities condition is
not so stable.
It could also be the solution for various tourism sites, which is going downwards due to lack of
proper advertisement.

Where do you see this generating cash?

This project provides people a much cheaper and more convenient way to explore the sites,
offering sites management companies solutions for their problems.
VR data which be collected on the sites is valuable resource which can be held as some
important media like books and movies.
Those who choose this way will pay for the tickets. The price of one ticket includes the ticket
price of the site, which will be given to the site, and the service fee which will be the
profit.
There are many people would like to travel in real after they have gone through the VR
experience. Giving advertisement for hotels and airline companies is a potential market.

How did you arrive at you final idea?

Every people in the globe want to travel certain places in their lifetime. Basically average
population lay out money in travelling stuff which could be devastating sometimes in terms of
both economically and time.
So, we decided to work on this particular area because it would make world more easier to
access and one can visit his/her dream places without investing huge amount of money and
in limited time and get experience about the places before visiting personally and
can travel personally in near future.

Constraints and problems that can arise

As a new way of enjoying the world, some of those who make their lives on conventional
traveling industries will come out and fight for their interests. Hotels, transportation companies,
travel agencies and taxi drivers and so on, they will stand out and protest this project.
In order to achieve the project, support of the sites authorities is one of the key facts of the
success.
In order to be accepted by the customers and become popular among them, the most real
experience have to be offered, so they will not feel too much difference between using our
service and going to the real sites. Thus can make this way really attractive. Technologies have
to be applied and devices should be made or improved to meet our requirements.
The big challenges in the field of virtual reality are developing better tracking systems, finding
more natural ways to allow users to interact within a virtual environment and decreasing the
time it takes to build virtual spaces.

Prototyping
The first step in building of a virtual Tourist Site Exploration simulator it is needed a
systematic mechanism of gathering an information about one specific place of a tourist
destinations. All these data are integrated stepwise and tested simultaneously.
There were applied various tools to find:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Image collection and processing

Temperature and natural climate of the place
Wind effects
Aroma and smell of the place
Sound effects
Rain and lightning effects
Historical data processing

The second step of the prototype is creation of a virtual environment identical to a specific
place. For this it would need a high tech studio to create virtual reality graphics without

needing glasses. Specific temperature and climatic conditions are adjusted to match the desired
destination. Even the smell and wind is replicated with different compounds that is added to
the air or fans to make wind.
Background sound effects and noises (noise of other tourists should be eliminated) are added
according to the tourist location. It is also a possible to add raining, lightning and humidity
effect of a specific location according to the collected data. In a special case it can mimic our
tourist location to a certain era from the historical data that is gathered. All these effects are
tested and refined individually at first and then added simultaneously and refined again until
the results are acceptable.
The third step is to introduce motion into virtual reality. As the interaction space in studio is
very limited because of the range of sensors. To resolve this issue there introduced a device
that prevents physical displacement in real world even if someone walks. A solution might be
a belt similar to treadmill having feet motion sensors which calculates the exact direction and
speed of the motion. Person should walk on it and feels it is moving front while his/her relative
position should not change.
The fourth step is VSE prototype refining. In the beginning, a copyrights of virtual realization
of a small building such as a Church should be taken. A handsome donation for their
cooperation will be demonstrated. One person who knows the most details of the sites, for
example the cleaners, can be hired to help testing the result. Motivation such as a specific
amount of money for each problem he points out can be given. Differences can be amended
until no one could point out new ones. Then the product is ready to be launched in industry
for mass level production.


Figure 1: VSE flow chart

Sketch of Virtual Site Explorer

Product Market:
For a sustainable business model identifying right markets is of utmost importance. To insure
market growth constant innovation and research is required.
VSE market is composed primarily of:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Tourism
Education
Entertainment Industry
Hotels and restaurants
Airline industry
Space industry

Product Marketing Strategy:

As we know for a successful business we need a proper marketing plan for our product that
how to communicate with our customers and to find some potential buyers.
We can use various marketing strategies for this problem
1. Online Advertising can be used in various tourism sites and social network sites for
gathering a lot of customers.
2. Distributing free samples of VSE.
3. Giving a free demo and presentation of Historical era sites for virtual interactive
learning in schools and educational institutes.
4. Convincing big technical companies such as Google, Microsoft or Facebook for their
investment and collaboration.
5. Entertainment industry can be a potential customer.
6. Space Industry might need VSE assistance for training young recruits.
7. Introducing a free website for the tourists showing them attractive tourist spots.
8. A mobile app for VSE promotion.

Summary
Traveling industry is a growing market. But in our eyes, there is a lot of problems that limit its
development and also constrains peoples abilities of enjoying it. This project is aim to use VR
technology to make the world easier to access, to help tourists to explore where they want to explore
use a minimum time and money, to help tourist sites to deliver as many as possible people what they
offer, and in the meantime make this industries much more environmental friendly.

In practice, this idea will allow people to explore places they have never visited. It is really a revolution
of the society of peoples holiday life. It has a huge potential.

Future Enhancement
1. Develop a business plan and find sponsor for integrating of the plan.
2. Identify possible site authorities and convince them about our project to make their
sites virtually available for public.

References
http://www.thefreshquotes.com/travel-and-tourism-quotes-slogans
http://www.famous-quotes.com/topic.php?tid=1236
http://geographyfieldwork.com/TourismGrowthCauses.htm
http://www.fortwaynecvb.com