Places, not just objects
Most 3D teaching content is an object: an engine, a heart, a pump. An object is the right unit when the lesson is how a thing is built. It is the wrong unit when the lesson is a setting: how a ward is arranged around a bed, where the tooling sits in a hangar, how a trench is stepped and recorded at a dig site. Those are places, and students learn places by standing in them. Most students cannot be there, and few can be there more than once.
MIHWAR (محور) is a working prototype that Nplay for Interactive Solutions, Amman, built and prepared for a Jordanian university: a 3D and XR teaching platform the university owns. One of its ideas is that a place is an asset alongside a model. A lecturer captures a ward, a hangar or a dig site on a consumer 360° camera, drops teaching hotspots onto the capture, and stands the library's models inside it. The result is a 360 degree virtual lab: a place a student can enter from a browser, with the things to learn pinned to it.
The hotspots are numbered and anchored in space. When the learner drags the view around, hotspot 3 stays on the monitor, the trolley or the fan blade it marks instead of sliding about the screen. The numbering gives the lecturer an order to teach in and the student a route through the place.
Four moves from camera to classroom
Capture the place
Shoot the ward, hangar or dig site on a consumer 360° camera. Nothing has to be modelled first, and the lecturer who knows the place chooses where the camera stands.
Place numbered hotspots
Drop teaching hotspots onto the capture in the order you want them met. Each one is anchored in space, so it stays on the object it marks.
Stand library models inside it
Pick 3D models from the library and set them in the capture. In the prototype they cast shadows, so a sectioned turbofan reads as standing in the hangar rather than pasted over it.
Send it through review
A capture is a library asset like any other. It carries a declared licence and a named owner, and an academic in the owning college reviews it before the whole university teaches from it.
What a standing model brings with it
A model stood inside a capture is more than a shape. In the prototype each model carries its own teaching content: what it teaches, its intended learning outcomes, and key features that each have a note. The turbofan in the hangar example comes with three outcomes: trace the gas path from inlet to exhaust, explain why bypass ratio drives thrust and fuel burn, and identify foreign-object damage on a fan blade. In the model viewer a learner can orbit it, run the animation, explode it, cut a section, use X-ray or measure in millimetres.
So the lecturer's hotspot in the hangar says where to look, and the model standing beside it says what to learn. The capture supplies the place and the library supplies the depth. Both can be reused in the next capture.
Why this is the cheapest XR content a university can make
The expensive part of most XR content is building the world. Someone has to model, texture and light a ward before a single student walks into it. A capture skips that step: the world comes from the camera, and the only authored layers are the hotspots and the models the library already holds. Our view is that this makes a 360 degree virtual lab the cheapest content a university can produce, in a format it already has most of the pieces for: a lecturer who knows the place, a consumer camera and a browser.
The saving compounds. The models standing inside a capture are the same ones that sit in the library for every other use, so a turbofan placed in a hangar capture can also appear in an experience a student builds in the level builder. Library models come from student coursework and three other production routes, and every one passes the same academic review gate. The library grows by coursework rather than by purchase order, so cost per module falls each year instead of recurring. The ownership side of the argument is set out in our comparison of an owned library and a per-seat subscription.
One capture, four ways out
A capture with its hotspots and models is one scene, and the scene runs four ways: in a browser with no install, in a headset over WebXR, on a phone in AR from the same URL, and inside Unity or Unreal as glTF plus a scene manifest. A lecturer can send the class a link, and a department with a headset can walk the same ward in it. A 360 degree virtual lab built this way is not trapped on one device or one supplier, and the formats and trade-offs are covered in our post on running one scene four ways.
Four illustrative scenarios
| Discipline | The place | What hotspots could mark | Library model stood inside |
|---|---|---|---|
| Applied medical sciences | A ward bay | Bed, monitor, hand-wash point, supply trolley | A model from the applied medical sciences library |
| Aviation science | A hangar | Engine access, tooling store, floor markings | The sectioned high-bypass turbofan, whose fan, compressor and turbine turn on one shaft when run |
| Archaeology | A dig site | Trench edges, layer boundaries, find locations | A model of a find from the site |
| Engineering | A workshop or laboratory | Machine, isolator, control panel | A model of the machine or one of its parts |
What the prototype does not prove
We would rather state the limits than leave them to be found. In the MIHWAR prototype the 360° captures are painted, not photographed. They exist so that you can try the hotspot and standing-model mechanics in a browser with no install, plugin or network connection, and they show how a capture behaves, not how a real ward looks through a real lens. The 3D models are indicative rather than teaching-grade, and four stages of the ingest pipeline are represented rather than executed. There is no deployment and no student result behind it: this is a working prototype, not a finished course.
Two further limits belong to the medium. A 360° capture shows a place from where the camera stood: the learner looks around but cannot walk the room freely, the trade-off discussed in 360° photo versus 3D walkthrough. And a capture needs care about what the lens picks up. A ward or a hangar should be captured empty or staged, with the owner's agreement, and a reviewer should check the result before it is published. That check is what the academic review gate is for.
A 360 degree virtual lab teaches a place and the objects in it. It does not replace time in the real ward, hangar or dig site. It makes that time count for more.
Four kinds of lab that suit this first
- Medical and applied medical sciences labs, where students should know a ward or a clinical skills room before they walk into one.
- Aviation and engineering departments, whose hangar or workshop is too busy to open to every cohort.
- Archaeology programmes, where the dig site is remote, seasonal or changes as the work goes on.
- Any college that already holds 3D models in its library and wants a real place for them to stand in.
360 degree virtual lab: frequently asked questions
Do students need a headset to use a 360 degree virtual lab?
No. The same scene opens in a browser with no install. A headset over WebXR, a phone in AR from the same URL, and Unity or Unreal (as glTF plus a scene manifest) are further ways to run it.
What camera do you need?
A consumer 360° camera is enough. The lecturer captures the place, then adds numbered hotspots and library models in the platform.
Are the captures in the MIHWAR prototype real photographs?
No. They are painted, so that the hotspots and the standing models can be tried with no install and no network. A real deployment would use captures of the university's own spaces, with the same review gate.
Who owns a capture once it is made?
The university. Every capture carries a declared licence and a named owner, and the library sits in the university's own storage, so it keeps working if a supplier contract ends.