Google Develops Abbey Road Studios Virtual Tour
By Andy Kahn Apr 16, 2015 • 10:25 am PDT
Abbey Road Studios partnered with Google to design and develop a virtual tour of the famed London recording space. The Inside Abbey Road Studios virtual tour offers access to all three recording studios, the chance to examine and interact with Abbey Road Studios equipment and see images and hear songs from throughout its storied history. The virtual tour offers the option to be guided through Abbey Road by producer Giles Martin (son of The Beatles’ producer George Martin), Head of Audio Products Mirek Stiles or broadcaster Lauren Laverne.
Google utilized several newly developed technologies to create the Inside Abbey Road Studios virtual tour including composite HDR (High Dynamic Range) panoramic images and using a Lidar scanner to generate a “point cloud” to match photo locations to over 30 million points in each studio, as well as other innovative approaches to 3D imagery and audio recording. The attention to detail and precision of the project was integral in making the most realistic recreation of the space, as evidenced by the description of part of audio recording process:
Audio is the most important part of any musical experience. To make sure you get a high level of fidelity in Inside Abbey Road, we used a technology known as Web Audio. Used for positioning the sounds in the 3D space and for recreating classic effects like ADT in the gadgets, which would have in the past required heavy plugins like Flash.
In addition, every audio segment in the audio guided tours by Lauren Laverne, Giles Martin and Mirek Stiles, as well as the site intro audio by Dean Lennox Kelly, was re-amped at Abbey Road Studios. The voice over was played back and re-recorded in the relevant studio space to accurately capture the reverberation times and unique acoustic characteristic of each room.
Take the Inside Abbey Road Studios virtual tour by following this link.
Google utilized several newly developed technologies to create the Inside Abbey Road Studios virtual tour including composite HDR (High Dynamic Range) panoramic images and using a Lidar scanner to generate a “point cloud” to match photo locations to over 30 million points in each studio, as well as other innovative approaches to 3D imagery and audio recording. The attention to detail and precision of the project was integral in making the most realistic recreation of the space, as evidenced by the description of part of audio recording process:
Audio is the most important part of any musical experience. To make sure you get a high level of fidelity in Inside Abbey Road, we used a technology known as Web Audio. Used for positioning the sounds in the 3D space and for recreating classic effects like ADT in the gadgets, which would have in the past required heavy plugins like Flash.
In addition, every audio segment in the audio guided tours by Lauren Laverne, Giles Martin and Mirek Stiles, as well as the site intro audio by Dean Lennox Kelly, was re-amped at Abbey Road Studios. The voice over was played back and re-recorded in the relevant studio space to accurately capture the reverberation times and unique acoustic characteristic of each room.
