Capturing the photographs you will use in ARDI-360 doesn't require a lot of exotic hardware - there are a range of good cameras now available and you can even use your mobile phone.

Two of our suggested methods are below.

The GoPro Fusion camera is an excellent choice for capturing 360 photographs. It's a true 360-degree camera (meaning it captures sky and floor as well as front/back/left/right).

But more importantly it also includes onboard telemetry that allows the video to be completely stabilised, so that no matter which direction the camera-person moves and which way they face, the 'north' in the final video stays 'north' to the user at all times. This significantly cuts editing time later.

Simply walk through your scene recording a video, then convert it when you get back to your desktop PC. You can then extract frames from the video to create a fantastic ARDI-360 experience.

Cardboard Camera is an application for iOS and Android that allows you to take 360-degree panoramic photographs. The application is free and photo quality is excellent.

Note however that while the price-point is excellent, there are a couple of issues with this method…

• The photographs will not capture upwards or downwards - those will end up being black areas. While the photos are still very useful, some immersion is lost.
• The photographs will not be aligned to true north - the photographer will either have to consistently start the photo facing north, or will have to realign them while editing later.

Either way, your final output is a set of .JPEG/.JPG files of those points you would like to turn into 360 waypoints around your plant.

Copy these photos into the appropriate folders that you created at the end of the planning phase.

The next step is Adding Hotspots