360° Tour

Here’s the first public release of an ongoing, bespoke virtual tour of the beautiful Raincliffe Woods & Forge Valley in Scarborough. There's almost 500 acres of steep inclines and thick ancient woodland, making some paths difficult to navigate. It seems a shame that many wouldn't be able to explore these spaces, so this is the team result. This really is just the foundations and the starting point, capturing many more areas of the woodland as time goes on, updating this interactive map.

• Virtual experience: It's an immersive virtual tour built by Your360: Immersive Virtual Tours that lets people explore the woods remotely using 360-degree panoramic photos, soundscapes, and music using Christopher Goddard’s illustration as the base map. 
  
• Focus on accessibility: The virtual tour aims to make the beauty of Raincliffe Woods accessible to everyone, even those who can't physically navigate the steep inclines and dense forests.
• Rich soundscape: To capture the rich soundscape of Raincliffe Woods in its entirety, a variety of recording setups were used. Ranging from the readily portable Sony D100 to the more customisable Zoom F3 rig equipped with LOM Uši Pro microphones, configured in preferred stereo arrangements like ORTF and Spaced Pair. A hydrophone was used for capturing the sounds beneath Throxenby Mere’s surface. To minimize traffic noise, a dedicated recording rig (drop rig) captured the nocturnal symphony of the woods overnight.
• Ongoing project: This is the first public release, and the creators plan to add more areas of the woodland to the interactive map over time.
• Credits: The write-up acknowledges the contributions of various people involved in the project, including photographers, sound therapists (Kate Stancombe from The Sounding Space), musicians (The Blow-Ins), and to Gillain and Claire of the Raincliffe Wood Community Enterprise.