New Expeditions: ThingLink’s Stunning 360 Image Library

Kyla Ball February 9, 2021

ThingLink’s 360 Image Library is a curated collection of professional 360 images from culturally relevant natural and historic sites. You can use the images to create virtual tours and immersive learning experiences that let your learners travel virtually across the world.

How can you access the 360 Image Library?

You now have access to the 360 Image Library in all account types in ThingLink. You will find a link to the library on the left navigation sidebar. Simply browse through the images and choose one that you could like to clone. In addition, you can choose images for annotation from the 360° Image Library during the image creation flow.

We first launched ThingLink’s 360 Image Library in 2017, which allowed teachers and students to build virtual expeditions and field trips. Using ThingLink’s ‘Clone’ feature, users could create their own interactive versions of the library images. For instance, they could add notes and narration, or connect several scenes into a virtual tour. It was so popular that subsequently we made the 360 Image Library available to all users – not just those in education.

Create virtual tours that users can access anywhere

We know educators would like to create their own virtual tours using 360 imagery, but may not have access to a 360-degree camera. The library features over 50 new scenes such as Antarctica, California State Parks, Desert Habitats, and Medieval Europe. You can also find a stunning series of shots from selected destinations such as CERN, The Palace of Versailles and Taj Mahal. Now anyone can use ThingLink’s 360 Image Library to explore historical landmarks, visit international capitals and Unesco World Heritage Sites from wherever they are.

Teachers can guide the tours from their home, by recording a voice narration in the background of the images. This means that students are not required to wear headsets, or be online at the same time. They can view the guided VR tours at their own pace from an iphone, android phone or any mobile device.

How do you create a virtual tour?

Watch this short video and become a virtual tour creator!

You can easily create a new tour using ThingLink 360 Image Library: start by following the steps below. Most importantly, when you use our library images there’s no need to worry about copyright, you’re covered!

1. Search images from ThingLink 360 Image Library
2. Clone the image to your own account and open it in the tag editor
3. Record your guided tour in the background of the image
4. Share with learners via direct link, LMS, Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams. You can also embed your virtual tour in a website or landing page, share via social media or with a QR code.

What can you use Virtual Tours for?

Using ThingLink’s new “Conditional Transition” functionality, it’s now easy to build tests and learning games that include a question for the viewer before transitioning to the next scene. This can be a fun project for students working in small groups, and they can share their games with each other!

How can you create an escape room using ThingLink’s 360 image library?

1. Choose images from the ThingLink 360 Image Library
2. Annotate images with information embedded within the hotspots around the base 360 image.
3. Create transitions from one scene to another with questions. When you get the right answer, you can move on to the next scene

Further reading on creating virtual tours with ThingLink

Read how featured educator Jennifer Ivory brought literature to life through escape rooms created with ThingLink and how you can do the same with ThingLink 360° Image Library! Read our round up of this and other tours in our blog How to Make a Virtual Escape Room.

Virtual Tours in ThingLink are being used across a huge range of sectors, from real estate to safety and security training. Realtors can create virtual staging tours that provide a walkthrough of a site for potential buyers who can’t attend in person. Our new floor plan feature adds extra navigation for the viewer.

ThingLink is the simplest and easiest to learn virtual tour software for Higher Education users, who use it to create high quality 360-degree tours at low cost that are instant and easy to update.

• Read how universities worldwide are using ThingLink to create virtual campus tours.
• Read how an academic at Queens University Belfast created virtual field trips
• Read how Southampton University created virtual field trips for marine biology students
• Virtual Tours in ThingLink can also be used with a VR headset: Read our round up of the latest research into using Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in workplace training
• NEW for Unity users: ThingLink Unity plugin lets you share your Unity 3d tours with anyone

Taking your own 360-degree images

If you want to create your own virtual tours from scratch you will need a camera or phone that takes 360 jpgs as photospheres. Models to look at include the Insta360, Ricoh Theta V or Ricoh Theta z1 cameras or the Google Pixl phone range. Do bear in mind that panoramic photos are not suitable for creating 360 degree images.