What we learned creating a Virtual Reality experience for the city of Basel

A few months ago we started working with Pro Innerstadt Basel, which is an organization that is responsible for promoting the city. As we started discussing the goals that the Virtual Reality experience had to achieve it became clear that they were not looking only at promoting tourism for the city.

The goal of Pro Innerstadt Basel is to promote all the city has to offer to people already living in it, or in the metropolitan area. For this reason they created a special page called Basel Live where they promote what is happening in and around the city. So we decided to focus on places “Off the beaten path”.

Aereal view of the location of the Virtual Reality stories for the city

We already documented a few things we learned about creating Virtual Reality experiences for the city of St.Gallen. This post documents the special learning from the work we did for the city of Basel.

1) You don’t always need to look too far from the main attractions to find the hidden jewels

Off the beaten path sounds like you have to go far away from where the masses of tourists assemble, but the tower of the Münster (Cathedral) in Basel proves that they can be closer to you than what you think.

View of the old town and the Rhein river from the top of the tower of Basel Münster

Entrance to the tower is free of charge and it provides with fantastic views of the city and the river. This photo was taking in April, as the leaves of the trees were not yet out. Imagine the view as soon as spring or summer is in full bloom?

2) Off the beaten path for Basel zig zags the Rhein river

“Sunnele”: A place where to enjoy the sun sitting with friends or walking through the promenade.

Basel is at the border with Germany and France. Usually the border is marked by the Rhein river itself, except for Basel. Basel occupies both sides of the river. The one on the “German” side is called “Klein Basel”, or Little Basel. It has a special character, and hosts universities and the largest building of the city, the Roche tower. There are 5 bridges crossing the city, 4 of which made it into the Virtual Reality experience.

The Mittlerebrücke or middle bridge is shared by trams, autos, bicycles and pedestrians. It is livelier than the other bridges, and the shores on the Klein Basel side are favorite of the locals to sit down and enjoy the view of the water while chatting. There is a Swiss-german word for this tradition: “Sunnele”, which if translated directly means “to enjoy the sunshine”.

Sunnele: (Swiss German) To enjoy the sunshine

3) Not all spots are good spots.

If you walk down the stairway from the Cathedral to the river you will find a very old tradition of the city. They have a wooden boat that crosses the river without a motor. The boat uses the current of the river and sets its rudder against the river flow depending on the side it wants to cross to.

We thought it would make a nice shot, except that setting up the camera in the boat without it going over board or our photographer being in the shot is impossible. So we decided to shoot it from the shore instead.

Crossing the Rhein river using the water flow as combustible.

4) “Off the beaten path museums”are not the normal museums.

Basel has plenty of museums. As we were planning our “Off the beaten path” list our partner at the city told us not to focus on them. There is something imposing to a museum, and they usually have their loyal set of patrons. The museums we focused on are the ones you won’t expect in a city like Basel.

The Paper museum of Basel is one such special museums. Kids love them, there is a cafeteria, and you learn about paper, mills, and the power of water. Its exhibition is well laid out, and according to TripAdvisor is the number one activity in the city.

5) Check your phone models (Also called Oops, Apple did it again)

The day before the exhibition started we got an anxious call from the guy working on the web page. He told us that the WebVR stories were not showing well on his iPhone. After some questioning it seems that the Apple model X performs some zooming and adds a vertical line that is not in the center of the WebVR viewer. There is an article from Google that describes how to fix the issue.

Still we ended up creating a new version of the story that requires no navigation to make it easier for folks using a cardboard viewer to look at the link. Check both links in the VR landing page of BaselLive

We hope this information is helpful for those of you looking forward to story telling in Virtual Reality. You might want to take a look at our other set of hints we published for the work we did for the city of St. Gallen. Or check our article about Story Telling in Virtual Reality

If you are looking for a platform to create stories in Virtual Reality try our Weavr editor and its associated set of viewers. If you are looking for a company that will help you bring your ideas in VR to life check our partner Bitforge. And if you are looking for more lecture on storytelling in Virtual Reality subscribe to us.

Happy Virtual Reality Story Telling, and happy experiences IRL.