Tag: virtual reality

Our stall at Pasifika Festival 2024!

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Wellington City Libraries stall at Pasifika Festival 2023

Mālo ni, Fakaalofa lahi atu, Kia orāna, Tālofa lava, Mālō e lelei, Talofa, Noa’ia, Ni sa bula vinaka, Mauri, Welkam Olgeta,  Halo Olketa and Tēnā koutou katoa, warm greetings to you all.

Join us at Wellington Pasifika Festival 2024! Drop by our library stall at Waitangi Park on Saturday 10th February, as we celebrate Pacific cultures and contributions to Aotearoa New Zealand. Experience the sights, sounds, and flavours and diversity of the Pacific in this free and whānau-friendly festival. We’ll be there with a pop-up library full of contemporary titles from our Pasifika collections, in a range of Pacific Languages and English. We’ll also be running free Virtual Reality (VR) activities for kids!

Āhea | When 12pm–6pm, Saturday 10 February 2024
Ki hea | Where Waitangi Park, Wellington Waterfront |
Te utu | Cost Free

From art and language to performance and food – the Pasifika Festival is all about acknowledging the richness of our Pacific cultures. Enjoy the wonderful line-up of performances, stalls, and food trucks on offer and come say hi to the Wellington City Libraries team!

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Virtual Escape from Te Pātaka Library

Xinxin

This game is situated in Te Pātaka Library, which is the off-site storage facility for our huge collection of books, DVDs, CDs and vinyl. To introduce you to this potentially unfamiliar library space, we’ve created  a virtual reality escape game! Can you escape from Te Pātaka library?

Instructions on how to play:

    • Click and drag your mouse to explore the 360 degree photos of Te Pātaka library’s collection.
    • Click on the items around the library to get the clues, and click on the ‘X’ on the top right corner to close the clues. Hover over the items will also give you some clues.
    • When you find an item, select it to reveal its library related question. The answer to this question (shall be entered at the second item) unlocks that item, and so on.
    • If you typed the wrong answer at first, close the box first and re-type the answer.
    • Enter your answers in lower case and leave no spaces between the words.
    • You may want to refresh the page if needed.
    • For example, if you open an item and it asks you the question:
      Which library database is not a magazine database?
      PressReader, Magazines on Libby,  Oxford Art Online, or NZ Geographic
      The answer is Oxford Art Online (type the answer ‘oxfordartonline‘ at another item in that room) would unlock that item.
    • Enjoy!

Visit Te Pātaka’s Virtual Reading Room

Xinxin

Te Pātaka holds Central Library’s huge collection of books, DVDs, CDs and vinyl. Now you can virtually visit the amazing Te Pātaka collection with this panoramic interior view. It even comes with the library sounds that you may miss (or wish to turn off, and now you can!)

Click and drag your mouse to move through the photo and enjoy the added links to parts of our collection via the catalogue.

Introducing VR at Wellington City Libraries!

wclstaff

As you might have seen, Wellington City Libraries will soon be hosting A Step Back in Time, a virtual reality (VR) expo featuring Jurassic Park, David Attenborough and more!

Book your session

But what exactly is VR? In terms of mechanics, VR is usually a computer, stereoscopic headset and set of sensors working together to create the sensation of standing in–and moving through–an entirely digital space (check out Wareable for a more technical explanation!). But VR is much more than just its physical components.

One of the things VR is great for is exploring new worlds. We’ve recently had a lot of fun discovering tropical islands and distant galaxies with VR experiences such as Nature Treks, while our previous VR expo featured coral reefs and the Mariana Trench via Wevr’s fantastic theBlu.

But it’s not just the creation of space that VR excels at–it’s also a platform for telling stories. Several film studios have expanded already successful movie franchises into the VR world, including Universal Studios’ Jurassic World: Blue and Jurassic World: Apatosaurus (both on show at our expo!). Traditional studios don’t have a monopoly on creating content, either: one of our favourite stories is the beautiful Allumette–a re-imagining of The Little Match Girl created by Penrose Studios.

Despite theses successes, however, the technology really comes into it’s own when used in even more creative ways. An early pioneer of this was Tilt Brush, a virtual artist’s studio that lets you paint, sculpt and design works of digital art. Other experiences, such as Pixar’s Coco VR, combine creativity with traditional gaming, meaning that one minute you’re exploring the land of the dead, the next you’re dancing onstage before a crowd of skeletons!

These are just a few of the ways people are currently using VR technology, but there are many, many more. The world of VR is an open, evolving, uncertain place–and that’s exactly why we like it! As its uses continue to grow, we’ll do our best to keep you updated, so keep an eye out for more blogs. And while you’re waiting, why not join us at A Step Back in Time to discover VR for yourself!