[VR] Virtual trip to the Rhinoceros Cave

Origin of the project

At the beginning of the summer of 2018, excavations were resumed at the Rhinoceros Cave, Castelldefels, for extraction of the rhinoceros Stephanorhinus hundsheimensis. Immersium Studio moved to the site to perform various visits and get to know everything that surrounded the discovery of these remains.

The initial approach was to make immersive contents about the excavation, but during the different visits, the idea came to realize a Time Lapse 360⁰ on the process of extraction of the rhinoceros. The idea liked it and came within the innovative and new factors of that time, as virtually no such type of project existed on today’s virtual content platforms.

Virtual reality as a tool for virtual trips of place and time

During the excavations, Immersium Studio spent weeks next to the paleontologists, conducting follow-ups, interviews, recordings. This approach allowed us to know first-hand how they worked and lived the best moments of extraction of the rhinos challenges.

The virtual reality project of Immersium Studio focuses on the realization of two distinctive experiences:

• A Time lapse 360⁰ of 4 days of work in the Rhinoceros Cave.
• A video 360⁰ in real time, which shows how paleontologists work, performing different tasks in the extraction of the remains: screening, extraction of remains, tools used, drawing of challenges.

The time lapse should be performed with superior image quality, offering a resolution of 5.2k, with high bitrates to keep the highest possible quality.

The video 360⁰ offers ambisonic sound (ambix), it is the new surround audio system for virtual reality, which offers sound.

Immersium Studio was commissioned to complete the project, from the production, post-production and start-up process, with the highest visual quality, well above other professional projects known in content platforms, such as YouTube or Vimeo.