5 ms·

El Prado Museum – Virtual Tour

162 points by thegurus 2y ago

speps 2y ago
I really wish these projects, usually financed partially by European grants and other such schemes (aka tax payers), would release the raw data and let people develop their own experience with it. Open data from museums are the only way I can see it being archived for the long term benefit of society. PS: why the downvotes? It's literally written at the end but there's no download link anywhere... > Funded with the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRPP), Spain’s Next Generation EU financing and according to the initiatives within the component C.24.I3 Digitization and valorization of major cultural services, included in Prado Training as an Inclusive experience of visit.
- dmje 2y ago
  Many, many museums release their collections databases as open API’s, and many of the artworks are licensed under open licenses. That’s not to say they couldn’t do more - but it’s a very active area in many museums.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
andsoitis 2y ago
Do they have a VR experience too?
- mannycalavera42 2y ago
  yes, there is the cardboard button (last icon in the middle bottom of the screen)
OleksiiA 2y ago
English version: https://www.museodelprado.es/en/visita-virtual-coleccion-2023 https://www.museodelprado.es/en/visita-virtual-coleccion-202...
Animats 2y ago
Apple has one of those tours for their museum.[1] Apple used to be big on that. They called it "Quicktime VR"(1998) [2] The main application today is real estate sales.[3] [1] https://applemuseum360.com https://applemuseum360.com [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_VR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_VR [3] https://www.sothebysrealty.com/eng/sales/int/virtualtour3d-filter https://www.sothebysrealty.com/eng/sales/int/virtualtour3d-f...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
thomastjeffery 2y ago
It's cool to have a virtual tour of open gallery space, but it would be orders of magnitude cooler to have a virtual tour of the works in a museum's collection that are not on view. Most museums are only able to show a few dozen or hundred works in their galleries at a time, but store thousands of works in their collection. In an effort to accommodate this reality, many museums publish a freely available database of their collection. There isn't really a standard practice for creating, maintaining, and publishing these databases, so it really depends on each museum's collections team to do that work; and it will always be a relatively low priority. Digital exhibitions could radically change that.
- chatmasta 2y ago
  There’s a museum in Rotterdam called The Depot that always has all its works on exhibit and available to the public.
  - thomastjeffery 2y ago
    From Wikipedia: > The entire deposit collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (more than 151,000 objects housed together, arranged in fourteen storage compartments with five different climates) is stored here and is publicly accessible, on a total floor area of 15,541 m2. That's incredible.
    - chatmasta 2y ago
      You should probably have a tour guide on your first time there. Personally I was a bit confused which of the climate-controlled rooms I was actually allowed to enter (the doors all look like highly secure entrypoints). So I felt like I missed out on some exhibits and only scratched the surface of what they had on display (vs. in a filing cabinet).
mannycalavera42 2y ago
I LOVE this I would pay for being able to rent to audioguide for a couple of days (similarly to how you can rent the audioguide during the in person visit)
totalview 2y ago
I wonder what camera sensor was used to produce this. A DSLR on a pano/360 rig? Or something purpose built like a Weiss AG Civetta 230MP 360 scanning camera.
- fastaguy88 2y ago
  I think in the intro they show a Nikon on a motorized panning head.
- bahmboo 2y ago
  They also have x-rays of the individual works. Those seem to have been done in a separate process from the visible photos. Click on the camera icon next to a piece and there is then an additional selection for x-ray view.
  - raverbashing 2y ago
    Well, yes you need to take the painting out for an xray view
endisneigh 2y ago
I’m curious how you produce this? How could I make this for my house or neighborhood? Things like matterport seem too proprietary. This particular one seems to be a far higher quality as well. I’m curious what rig they used.
- speps 2y ago
  If you look at the floor it says "Second Canvas™" which is the company behind it it seems: https://www.secondcanvas.net/ https://www.secondcanvas.net/
- infl8ed 2y ago
  At my company we use https://aframe.io/ https://aframe.io/ to display 360 images (e.g. https://aframe.io/examples/showcase/sky/ https://aframe.io/examples/showcase/sky/), though the images themselves are produced from rendered models
cbdumas 2y ago
For anyone planning a visit to Spain, I can't recommend Madrid highly enough. I wasn't sure what to expect from the city, but it might be my favorite I've ever been to. Madrid is beautiful, clean, walkable, and very welcoming. The food was all amazing and it seemed like we never had to wait for a table. I had a great time in Barcelona, but I'd recommend Madrid over Barcelona in a heartbeat.
- lionkor 2y ago
  Which time of year would you recommend?
  - danieldisu 2y ago
    March - early June or Mid September - November Avoid July and August, horrible heat and most people have left the city
    - severino 2y ago
      > Avoid July and August, horrible heat and most people have left the city You mean it's bad that you don't have to wait in lines or get into crowded spaces?
      - telesilla 2y ago
        There are still tourists who for some weird reason come in the worst heat. Bring a hat.
        singleshot_ 2y ago
        Also sleep during most of the afternoon. Everything is open late.
  - tgv 2y ago
    Spring or autumn. Summer is simply too hot. I preferred it over Barcelona, too.
fuzzbazz 2y ago
Cool, but it could be better if some of the paintings didn't have so much light reflected from the roof, like in room 12. Maybe the camera should have been higher?
xnx 2y ago
Google Arts & Culture has hundreds of excellent 360 museum (and other cultural site) tours here: https://artsandculture.google.com/ https://artsandculture.google.com/ Separately, you can also zoom in to many artworks with extreme detail (e.g. 1000+ dpi).
John_da 2y ago
[flagged]
chatmasta 2y ago
I was in this museum a few weeks ago. I spent three hours there before I realized I hadn’t even covered half of it. It’s huge. Highly recommend a trip.
tmilard 2y ago
I may be biaised but I believe this "tour" is not good. Not immersive enough. Just not really something we want as client. - The moving/walking part is just bad. Even Matterport does much better with its technology. - The zooming-on-painting part is good though. The point : I am building a much more immersive technology . Here is an small example. https://free-visit.net/fr/demo01 https://free-visit.net/fr/demo01 If you like this visit, and if you know a museum who needs my immersive technology, please send me a mail, I would be glad : thierry.milard@gmail.com
- falloon 2y ago
  [dead]
  - tmilard 2y ago
    Thanks faloon for the link. It's the best 'fuid'virtual visit I have seen in recent months. Gaussian Splatting algorythm seems to be the 'game changer' thing in VR we were waiting for.... This is fantastic times in this area. what a time to be alive !
gijsnijholt1980 2y ago
If you go there, and there’s a long queue, do not blindly join it but look for alternate entrances.
aba_cz 2y ago
I know that not everybody has time, money, opportunity, etc. to go to Del Prado to see art with their own eyes but I have to say that seeing photos on my monitor before and seeing it in reality were completely different and not not transferable experiences. The light, those details and often even size of the canvas which is measured in meters and not centimeters are all incredible. For example Las Meninas is basically 3x3 meters or you can easily spend 1 hour looking at The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch. I will remember this visit till the end of my life.
- elondaits 2y ago
  It’s not said enough: Screens = tiny mass produced lights Paintings = A masterful mix of usually expensive substances carefully selected for the unique way in which they reflect light.
fasteo 2y ago
A much lesser known museum worth a visit in Madrid is the Sorolla museum[1]. I believe the museum was actually his house in Madrid. Sorolla is the master of light. His paintings are stunning[2] There are several virtual tours available online [3] [1] https://www.cultura.gob.es/msorolla/inicio.html https://www.cultura.gob.es/msorolla/inicio.html [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Cosiendo_la_vela.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Cosiendo... [3] https://www.cultura.gob.es/msorolla/exposicion/visita-virtual.html https://www.cultura.gob.es/msorolla/exposicion/visita-virtua...

162 points by thegurus 2y ago

I really wish these projects, usually financed partially by European grants and other such schemes (aka tax payers), would release the raw data and let people develop their own experience with it. Open data from museums are the only way I can see it being archived for the long term benefit of society. PS: why the downvotes? It's literally written at the end but there's no download link anywhere... > Funded with the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRPP), Spain’s Next Generation EU financing and according to the initiatives within the component C.24.I3 Digitization and valorization of major cultural services, included in Prado Training as an Inclusive experience of visit.

dmje 2y ago
Many, many museums release their collections databases as open API’s, and many of the artworks are licensed under open licenses. That’s not to say they couldn’t do more - but it’s a very active area in many museums.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

andsoitis 2y ago

Do they have a VR experience too?

mannycalavera42 2y ago
yes, there is the cardboard button (last icon in the middle bottom of the screen)

OleksiiA 2y ago

English version: https://www.museodelprado.es/en/visita-virtual-coleccion-2023 https://www.museodelprado.es/en/visita-virtual-coleccion-202...

Animats 2y ago

Apple has one of those tours for their museum.[1] Apple used to be big on that. They called it "Quicktime VR"(1998) [2] The main application today is real estate sales.[3] [1] https://applemuseum360.com https://applemuseum360.com [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_VR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_VR [3] https://www.sothebysrealty.com/eng/sales/int/virtualtour3d-filter https://www.sothebysrealty.com/eng/sales/int/virtualtour3d-f...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

thomastjeffery 2y ago

It's cool to have a virtual tour of open gallery space, but it would be orders of magnitude cooler to have a virtual tour of the works in a museum's collection that are not on view. Most museums are only able to show a few dozen or hundred works in their galleries at a time, but store thousands of works in their collection. In an effort to accommodate this reality, many museums publish a freely available database of their collection. There isn't really a standard practice for creating, maintaining, and publishing these databases, so it really depends on each museum's collections team to do that work; and it will always be a relatively low priority. Digital exhibitions could radically change that.

chatmasta 2y ago
There’s a museum in Rotterdam called The Depot that always has all its works on exhibit and available to the public.
- thomastjeffery 2y ago
  From Wikipedia: > The entire deposit collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (more than 151,000 objects housed together, arranged in fourteen storage compartments with five different climates) is stored here and is publicly accessible, on a total floor area of 15,541 m2. That's incredible.
  - chatmasta 2y ago
    You should probably have a tour guide on your first time there. Personally I was a bit confused which of the climate-controlled rooms I was actually allowed to enter (the doors all look like highly secure entrypoints). So I felt like I missed out on some exhibits and only scratched the surface of what they had on display (vs. in a filing cabinet).

mannycalavera42 2y ago

I LOVE this I would pay for being able to rent to audioguide for a couple of days (similarly to how you can rent the audioguide during the in person visit)

totalview 2y ago

I wonder what camera sensor was used to produce this. A DSLR on a pano/360 rig? Or something purpose built like a Weiss AG Civetta 230MP 360 scanning camera.

fastaguy88 2y ago
I think in the intro they show a Nikon on a motorized panning head.
bahmboo 2y ago
They also have x-rays of the individual works. Those seem to have been done in a separate process from the visible photos. Click on the camera icon next to a piece and there is then an additional selection for x-ray view.
- raverbashing 2y ago
  Well, yes you need to take the painting out for an xray view

endisneigh 2y ago

I’m curious how you produce this? How could I make this for my house or neighborhood? Things like matterport seem too proprietary. This particular one seems to be a far higher quality as well. I’m curious what rig they used.

speps 2y ago
If you look at the floor it says "Second Canvas™" which is the company behind it it seems: https://www.secondcanvas.net/ https://www.secondcanvas.net/
infl8ed 2y ago
At my company we use https://aframe.io/ https://aframe.io/ to display 360 images (e.g. https://aframe.io/examples/showcase/sky/ https://aframe.io/examples/showcase/sky/), though the images themselves are produced from rendered models

cbdumas 2y ago

For anyone planning a visit to Spain, I can't recommend Madrid highly enough. I wasn't sure what to expect from the city, but it might be my favorite I've ever been to. Madrid is beautiful, clean, walkable, and very welcoming. The food was all amazing and it seemed like we never had to wait for a table. I had a great time in Barcelona, but I'd recommend Madrid over Barcelona in a heartbeat.

lionkor 2y ago
Which time of year would you recommend?
- danieldisu 2y ago
  March - early June or Mid September - November Avoid July and August, horrible heat and most people have left the city
  - severino 2y ago
    > Avoid July and August, horrible heat and most people have left the city You mean it's bad that you don't have to wait in lines or get into crowded spaces?
    - telesilla 2y ago
      There are still tourists who for some weird reason come in the worst heat. Bring a hat.
      - singleshot_ 2y ago
        Also sleep during most of the afternoon. Everything is open late.
- tgv 2y ago
  Spring or autumn. Summer is simply too hot. I preferred it over Barcelona, too.

fuzzbazz 2y ago

Cool, but it could be better if some of the paintings didn't have so much light reflected from the roof, like in room 12. Maybe the camera should have been higher?

xnx 2y ago

Google Arts & Culture has hundreds of excellent 360 museum (and other cultural site) tours here: https://artsandculture.google.com/ https://artsandculture.google.com/ Separately, you can also zoom in to many artworks with extreme detail (e.g. 1000+ dpi).

John_da 2y ago

[flagged]

chatmasta 2y ago

I was in this museum a few weeks ago. I spent three hours there before I realized I hadn’t even covered half of it. It’s huge. Highly recommend a trip.

tmilard 2y ago

I may be biaised but I believe this "tour" is not good. Not immersive enough. Just not really something we want as client. - The moving/walking part is just bad. Even Matterport does much better with its technology. - The zooming-on-painting part is good though. The point : I am building a much more immersive technology . Here is an small example. https://free-visit.net/fr/demo01 https://free-visit.net/fr/demo01 If you like this visit, and if you know a museum who needs my immersive technology, please send me a mail, I would be glad : thierry.milard@gmail.com

falloon 2y ago
[dead]
- tmilard 2y ago
  Thanks faloon for the link. It's the best 'fuid'virtual visit I have seen in recent months. Gaussian Splatting algorythm seems to be the 'game changer' thing in VR we were waiting for.... This is fantastic times in this area. what a time to be alive !

gijsnijholt1980 2y ago

If you go there, and there’s a long queue, do not blindly join it but look for alternate entrances.

aba_cz 2y ago

I know that not everybody has time, money, opportunity, etc. to go to Del Prado to see art with their own eyes but I have to say that seeing photos on my monitor before and seeing it in reality were completely different and not not transferable experiences. The light, those details and often even size of the canvas which is measured in meters and not centimeters are all incredible. For example Las Meninas is basically 3x3 meters or you can easily spend 1 hour looking at The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch. I will remember this visit till the end of my life.

elondaits 2y ago
It’s not said enough: Screens = tiny mass produced lights Paintings = A masterful mix of usually expensive substances carefully selected for the unique way in which they reflect light.

fasteo 2y ago

A much lesser known museum worth a visit in Madrid is the Sorolla museum[1]. I believe the museum was actually his house in Madrid. Sorolla is the master of light. His paintings are stunning[2] There are several virtual tours available online [3] [1] https://www.cultura.gob.es/msorolla/inicio.html https://www.cultura.gob.es/msorolla/inicio.html [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Cosiendo_la_vela.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Cosiendo... [3] https://www.cultura.gob.es/msorolla/exposicion/visita-virtual.html https://www.cultura.gob.es/msorolla/exposicion/visita-virtua...