NSU Virtual Tour

The NSU Virtual Tour delivers valuable University information within the context of an electronic presentation.  This allows prospective students and parents to experience what NSU has to offer, from the comfort of their own home or office or even classroom.

This robust web application was created by Norfolk State University Web Services in 2002, for the Division of Research and Technology, specifically for the Norfolk State University Website and to be used as a marketing tool (CD) by NSU Admissions.

Here are the Virtual Tour’s fine points:

The NSU VR Tour has a ‘Flash Sniffer’ coded into the HTML pages & any browser not having the require plug in will be forwarded to Macromedia’s site to upload the plug in needed. 

• Fits within an 800x600 monitor, taking the browsers top navigational bar into consideration.  No need to scroll right or left, up or down.
• Main objective of overall design is to keep visitors on 1 page, as long as possible w/o the need to flip from page to page.
• Interface is simple in design, so as not to compete with the content.
• Most Virtual Tour’s are one ‘very’ large movie – which take up to and over five minutes to load in.
• NSU’s VR Tour is broken up into individual movies – each movie is created to load fast.
• The movies, upon selection, load into the frame when called – then unload upon another selection. Much like a record player will put back a record to play a new one.  This method ensures moving between tour stops is fast and smooth.
• This Virtual Tour is unique in that most all Virtual Tours, require additional plug-ins and lack the ability to utilize hotspots within the application.

Panorama (Top Middle/Left)

• The panorama is 360 degrees and has the basic stop, slow, fast and fastest settings – and is programmed so it will not ‘freeze’ up slower computers.
• The panorama has hot spots – and upon a mouse over will indicate whether it is information or a tour stop – and the name of such.
• There are hot spots that will open up information in a new window, or take you to a selected tour stop.
• And you can progress through one movie – into another, using these hotspots.

Interactive Map (Upper Right)

• On the right side of the interface is an interactive map.  This is a copy of the NSU map online and commonly used in NSU publications.
• This map is scrollable and moves from right – to left.
• Simply mouse over an active button (blue), which indicates a ‘tour stop’, and the name of the building appears in a small square. Click the button and the selected movie will load.

List of Stops (Lower Right)

• The lower right side of the movie is our list of Virtual Tour Stops – this list scrolls up and down.
• Here, you can click on a T, to go to that portion of the Tour, and then some have a W – taking you to their related section of the website.

 Summary (Lower Middle)

• The center section of the interface is the tour stops ‘summary’ and it is a basic outline on a scrollable page.
• We can later add to this summary, and since it is a scrollable menu.

Thumbnails (Lower Left) 

• The left side of the interface is for thumbnails. Each of these thumbnails – upon a mouse over, signifies if they are a photo, audio or video file.
• The thumbnail selection is also scrollable – making each menu scrollable ensures you have no limited how long your menus can be.
• Upon a mouse click – the selection will open up in a new window, which is HTML based, independent of the Flash movie – to keep file size down.

Button Links

• The outside frame of the interface has buttons linking to a help page, contact information page and directions to NSU.  These pages are on the NSU Website.
•  There is a link button, so the map can be viewed in it’s entirety

This Virtual Tour was created with the idea that people enjoy having control over what they view.

This Virtual Tour gives them just enough options to get where they wish to go on the tour, but not too many options to confuse them – and not too few to bore them. 

• Since the tour is broken into different movies – one for each section of the tour, it is very easy to update each section, add more photos, hotspots and make changes to text.
• In addition, it is very easy to change out the panoramas and even add new tour stops.
• Because this tour is totally created in Flash, it can be easily published in a QuickTime format, a Windows Projector, Macintosh Projector, an executable format and even as a standalone file – publishable on a CD – with no need of plug ins or download time (with an autorun).

In closing, the NSU Virtual Tour was carefully planned for future expansion.  Updated as NSU is updated, including the older buildings currently being remodeled.  We can easily add new tour stops, and update any and all information. 

In creating the Virtual Tour in this fashion, it will ensure the tour keeps a ‘cutting edge’ look and feel – for many years to come. 

If you have questions or comments about this Virtual Tour, please contact:  Debbie Jones, NSU Webmaster - webmaster@nsu.edu