Experience the Vietnam Military History Museum with 360-degree photos

The Military History Museum was captured with a 360-degree camera and uploaded to a digital platform, allowing people living far away to experience some areas online.

360-degree photo page interface of the Military History Museum. (Video: TH).

The "virtualized" product of the Military History Museum was introduced by the Yoolife platform at the same time the museum officially opened on November 1.

In it, users can select the areas they want to see from the entrance to the exhibition areas and use the mouse or touch screen to rotate 360 ​​degrees. In each area, directional arrows will appear for users to choose the direction of visit, similar to the experience of visiting a real museum.

Users can also click on the artifacts to see the annotation information. According to the development team, they have recreated about 50 locations in the museum, along with more than 700 artifacts. In addition, the special point when bringing it to the digital platform is that the locations and artifacts are listed in a list, so that users can quickly access the area they want to visit.

Mr. Nguyen Manh Tung, founder of the open digital platform YooLife , said that this unit specializes in IoT solutions and has available "virtualization" tools with 360-degree images, which have been used in many large projects. They virtualized the museum in one day.

He said that when he participated in the construction of some items at the museum, he wanted to contribute to bringing this experience to the Internet so that those who did not have the opportunity to come directly could also experience it, and the museum allowed it.

The development team has recreated about 50 locations in the museum, along with more than 700 artifacts.

"Although it cannot bring the same feeling as reality, this method can help people visualize the location in advance as well as experience some of the feeling of visiting ," said Mr. Tung.

To fully recreate the scene, the team chose to do it right before the official opening day, when the museum was already completed for filming. The equipment used was an Insta360 camera, which can take 360-degree photos, that is, the entire scene in every direction in one shot. From 300 photos taken in 300 different locations, the team selected the 50 most typical locations to put on the platform.

According to Minh Khanh, one of the people involved in digitizing the project, the challenge of the project is to record in a short time and then arrange the photos according to the actual travel itinerary, because the museum has a large area, with hundreds of thousands of artifacts on display. Then, in the exhibition spaces, they will attach information about the artifacts to the photos. "Because we have a virtualization platform for previous spaces, we did not encounter many difficulties and it only took about a day to recreate ," Khanh said.

Minh Khanh with the Insta360 X4 camera used to record panoramic footage. (Photo: Luu Quy)

According to Mr. Tung, unlike other forms of expression through photos and videos, 360-degree photos help users feel the space more clearly, thereby creating a more realistic feeling. In addition, thanks to the self-developed platform, they can customize, such as adding more information to the photo. For example, when viewers see a space and want to learn more about an artifact, they can click on it to learn more. Due to the time constraint, the group has only been able to digitize about 700 artifacts this way.

YooLife representative also assessed that the 360-degree photo solution is not new, but previously faced some challenges such as needing specialized equipment to take photos or requiring the experience with VR glasses. However, up to now, users can create their own by using the panorama feature on smartphones and experience it directly on the computer or phone screen.

In addition, according to Mr. Tung, when the 5G network is deployed in Vietnam, mobile users will no longer have difficulty downloading 360-degree photo data from mobile devices. In the near future, the group plans to build a social network about 360-degree photos, so that users can share this type of content, and at the same time expand to many other fields such as education and culture, to take advantage of 360-degree photos.

The Vietnam Military History Museum opened on November 1 at Thang Long Avenue, in Tay Mo and Dai Mo wards, Nam Tu Liem district, Hanoi. The museum was built by the Ministry of National Defense in 2019 on an area of ​​386,600 m2, highlighted by the 45 m high Victory Tower in the front yard. The main building has 4 floors above ground and one ground floor. The total investment for the project is about 2,500 billion VND.