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ECU's 360 VR Immersive Campus Tours Now Live Online!

Architect Showcase 004 ECU 2017 11 08
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By Perrin Grauer

Posted on | Updated

Check out one of Canada's first comprehensive virtual tours of a university campus!

Emily Carr University of Art + Design’s 360 VR Immersive Campus Project is up and running online!

Anyone can now access 360-degree panoramic tours – including both images and video – of Emily Carr's campus, using virtual reality headsets or via the web. With a 360-degree format, students, staff, faculty and guests can explore entire virtual environments as if they were at the actual site.

The project reflects a more seamless experience in campus way-finding for the many different visitors to the campus building, as well as for students, staff and faculty who may want to know how to navigate Emily Carr, or want more information about the spaces and services provided within the university.

While the 360 Campus Tour’s original purpose was to support student recruitment, it is now being developed to support a number of other functions for departments across the campus, as well as for external visitors and staff, students and faculty.

These functions include teaching and pedagogy; illustrating best practices around classroom protocols; tours for use by Student Services, especially in those cases where interested parties may be outside of the city and unable to commute for a campus visit; technical services tours and demos; equipment demos, including way-finding for first aid kits and safety goggles; accessibility tours; safety tours; emergency procedures; scheduling and booking of classrooms and facility support; and identification of the advantages of individual rooms and facilities for bookings by internal and external users, looking to rent space at Emily Carr.

The 360 VR Immersive Campus Project has been produced by the Emily Carr University Production Services (ECUPS) unit of the Teaching + Learning Centre under the direction of Grant Gregson, in partnership with the Prototyping, Media + Programming Studio, Student Services and the Communications department. The TLC is grateful to all of the support provided by various departments at Emily Carr who provided their time and support for the project.

Foundation Tour

Our Foundation Tour will introduce you to the most important spaces for our first-year students. If you’re interested in pursuing an undergraduate degree at Emily Carr, this is for you! You can use any VR headset and your mobile phone to jump in, or simply access the tour via the web by visiting the link below.

Click to visit the FOUNDATION TOUR


Complete Tour


The Complete Tour presents a 360° view of our campus spaces, such as our classrooms, studios, shops, exhibition spaces, and resource areas like the Library + Learning Commons. You can use any device to view this tour or access it via the web by visiting the link below.

Click to visit the COMPLETE TOUR

Navigation Tips

  • Use the magnifying glass and + / – buttons to expand or reduce the floor plan
  • Click on the red dots in the floor plan to jump to a location, then use the arrows to navigate through rooms
  • Some areas will contain hotspots, denoted with icons and look for the “I” button to find out more information about each room. Click on these for richer content.


Additional 360 Tours are currently being worked on over the Fall 2019.

Visit the Emily Carr website for all the latest 360 VR Campus Tours here!

The “How To Film a 360 VR Campus Tour OER Guide” is coming soon!

The process behind the filming and production of the Emily Carr University campus tour will be released as a "How-To" instructional this Fall (2019) in an Open Educational Resource Guide on the BCcampus repository on the BCcampus OpenEd website. The guide was produced by the Teaching + Learning Centre.

360 Riot Walk – Henry Tsang

The research and development of the 360 Campus Tour by the Teaching + Learning Centre provided very useful technical information and facilities support for faculty member Henry Tsang’s 360 Riot Walk – a 360° video walking tour of the 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver. Evan Craig of the TLC’s ECUPS media team worked with Sean Arden from the Prototyping, Media + Programming Lab and Henry’s technical team to support the development of the project.
Read more about this project here.