water-link: a virtual tour of industrial water treatment

Explore water-link’s industrial water treatment plant in the port of Ghent through an interactive virtual tour. Poppr combined 360° photography, explanatory overlays and an aerial 360° video to make the installation and its role in the port accessible online. Created for the plant’s opening in 2020, the experience offered an alternative to an on-site event.

In 2018, water-link started construction of its second industrial water treatment plant. It purifies and desalinates dock water to provide process water of various quality levels to large enterprises that operate in the port. Accurate and reliable water production is crucial for many industrial processes.

By 2020, the project had been completed. Plenty of reason for a grand opening, after two years of construction. However, an on-site event soon proved near-impossible, due to ever-changing covid restrictions. That’s why we decided to create a large-scale digital alternative for an on-site opening, emphasizing the scale and importance of the new water treatment plant.

During the initial brainstorming session with the water-link team, it soon became apparent that a straightforward, small-scale tour simply wouldn’t do justice to the highly complex water plant. That’s why we wanted to go bigger. Nevertheless, we wanted to make the technical aspects of the water purification process accessible to a wider audience, using our familiar graphic and text overlays for indoor tours. We decided to produce a virtual tour and an accompanying teaser video for the installation. In addition, we wanted to create a 360-degree panorama video of the entire port of Ghent.

The port of Ghent covers a vast area and is over 32 kilometres long. That is too stretched-out for even the most advanced of camera drones that we love to work with. Their maximum flight height is limited. We took this restriction as a perfect opportunity to send in the cavalry in the form of a helicopter.

Our team went all out for the shoot. We opted for the Insta 360 Titan as our 360° camera of choice. We attached the camera to an extended tripod, which we then lowered down from the open helicopter door. This footage gave us a panoramic view of the port in unprecedented detail.

• 360-degree video, including voice over and text (in two languages) describing the environment and the installation.
• Virtual tour based on 360° photos of the inside of the treatment plant.
• Teaser video for publication on social media, shot using a racing drone moving about and around the building.
• Sleek interface design, based on water-link’s internal brand guidelines.

After a few weeks of hard work in post-production, the combined 360-degree video and virtual tour went live. The brand-new perspective of the port of Ghent adds to water-link’s storytelling and helps to shed light on the technical side of the water processing plant. The result? A worthy alternative for an opening event, showing the port of Ghent at its best.

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