How to Create Inclusive Virtual Field Trips for Epson Immersive Rooms

Joseph Mayo October 28, 2025

Ever wished you could take your entire class to the Amazon rainforest, the surface of Mars, or the halls of the Louvre or the Smithsonian… all before lunch?  With virtual field trips, you can! But how do you make sure you have created a truly inclusive and immersive experience for every single student?

We’ve got some exciting news for you!

You know that awesome, interactive ThingLink you build on the web? The same one you can share with a simple link, open on a PC, tablet, or phone? The very same one that works in VR headsets with our native app?

Well, get ready to supercharge it! That exact same ThingLink can now power a room-sized, floor-to-ceiling virtual experience in an Epson immersive room using a new, dedicated ThingLink app.

It’s the ultimate “build once, wow everyone” solution. And the best part? It’s incredibly easy to do – no virtual reality design expertise or coding experience required!

The Secret Superpower: Going Offline!

Here’s the magic ingredient for the Epson immersive room solution: the dedicated app downloads your ThingLink project for offline use.

Why is this so amazing?

1. Zero Lag, Zero Buffering: No more “spinning wheel of doom” or spotty school Wi-Fi ruining the magic. The experience is smooth, fast, and reliable.
2. Unleash True Student Creativity: This is the big one! Because the app runs offline, it can’t rely on external web links. This means no more simply linking out to Wikipedia or embedding a random YouTube video.

This “limitation” is actually your greatest creative opportunity! It pushes students to stop linking to information and start creating it.

Your 5-Step Guide to Creating an A+ Immersive Field Trip

Ready to build an incredible interactive experience? Here’s our guide to creating the perfect ThingLink, optimized for a fully immersive room.

Step 1: Start with an Awesome 360° Base

A 360° image is the perfect canvas for your virtual tour. It creates the “you are really here” feeling. Save your video content for the hotspots to provide 2D information and close-up details.

Pro-Tip: Don’t have a 360° camera? No problem! Just use the panoramic mode on your phone. You can easily stitch that panorama into a 360° scene right inside the ThingLink editor.

Step 2: Cue the Student Reporters! 🎤

Since you can’t link to external videos, have learners become the documentarians! When you visit a (real or virtual) site, have them prepare a short script. Film them “on-location” explaining a key concept, just like a news reporter or tour guide. Uploading this custom video to a hotspot makes the tour personal and reinforces student learning.

Step 3: Listen Up! Capture Authentic Audio 🎧

Don’t just show the scene – let students hear it. When you’re on a field trip (or even just outside in the schoolyard!), take 30 seconds to record the real ambient audio. The sound of a bustling market, the birds in a national park, or the quiet echo of a historical site or museum adds a massive layer of authenticity that a stock sound effect just can’t match.

Step 4: Gamify Your Tour! 🎮

Want to make your immersive room experience really engaging? Turn it into a digital escape or breakout room! Use ThingLink’s conditional transition functionality to create a challenge. To move from one scene to the next, students must first answer a question correctly. It’s a fantastic way to check for understanding and add a layer of fun to the virtual environment you create.

Step 5: Color-Code Your Clicks (A Super-Important Pro-Tip)

This one is key for the immersive room. In the dedicated app, you’ll use a remote control to navigate the hotspots. The remote’s interface will display all the visible hotspots.

Use different colored icons for your tags! Don’t just use the same blue dot for everything. By color-coding the interactive elements (e.g., green for videos, red for text, yellow for audio), you make it incredibly easy for the presenter to visually find and select the exact hotspot they want to open, keeping the flow of the learning activity seamless.

Shift Your Mindset: Field Trips are Now “Content Missions” 📸

The next time you take your students on a real-world field trip, treat it as a fact-finding and digital asset-gathering mission, with your students as the virtual tour creators.

The goal is no longer just to see the place in-person. The goal is to capture it.

Students should be actively gathering:

• Photos of key objects.
• “Reporter” videos of themselves explaining what they’re seeing in real-life.
• Ambient audio of the environment to create a truly multimedia, immersive learning experience.
• Written notes that they can later record as voice-overs.

All of this self-created material is then uploaded directly into your ThingLink project. It’s 100% yours, 100% offline-ready, and 100% more engaging.

From a single, easy-to-build ThingLink project, you can now create a powerful, inclusive learning experience that works on a phone, a tablet, a VR headset, and a breathtaking, room-sized immersive canvas.

What amazing worlds will your students build first?

Become a Certified ThingLink XR Expert

Ready to start creating in XR? The ThingLink XR Expert course teaches you how to design and build immersive learning experiences using images, 360 media, 3D models, branching scenarios, or augmented reality.

To gain the skills to build meaningful, real-world learning solutions that engage, and inspire, start the free course today! Click link below to learn more.