Breathtaking Viewports

Since the opening of Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, UK, millions of visitors have enjoyed the majestic views of the city and outlying harbors. The Tower, however, needed a modern way of displaying relevant information to its visitors. To address this need, Ideum created a gigapixel multitouch map viewer.

Built using the Open Exhibits (formerly GestureWorks Flash) multitouch development framework, the interactive exhibit allows people to zoom in and out of an extremely detailed image that was taken from the viewpoint of the 550 foot tall tower. A two-finger pinch-to-zoom gesture allows visitors to magnify details such as building signs and people while a bird’s eye view zoom-out shows landmark hotspots at a glance. At any time, the visitor may pan around in the picture with a single-finger-drag gesture.

The interpretive information is easy to access thanks to multi-language support, categorical based browsing, and geographical based hotspot icons. Tapping on hotspot icons reveals pop-up information panels filled with interpretive information in the form of images, video, and text. Hotspots may also be accessed through a categorically organized list of points. From this menu, an individual location title may be touched in order to fly to the location of the hotspot and open a pop-up window tethered by a line.

Ideum partnered with Henry Stuart from Spherical Images to capture the beautiful imagery. He took many pictures from all angles of the tall tower and stitched them into a comprehensive whole. Henry also captured views at night so that visitors may see the landscape as it appears when the sun is down.

As part of the launch, the Spinnaker Tower is including the interactive in its Easter activities.

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