Interview with Prof. Katherine Schwab on Flyover Zone’s Project to Restore the Metopes of the Parthenon
September 8, 2021
Bernard Frischer: Please tell us about yourself. What did you
FAQ
Most frequently asked questions
Educators can either direct their students to purchase our products through the appropriate stores listed in the Store part of this website, or they can contact our educational partner, VictoryXR, for educational pricing.
Our products are primarily aimed at the general public and at students from middle school through college.
By the end of 2021, our consumer products will support multi-user sessions between two people.
Webopedia defines a virtual tour as “a collection of panoramic images that are played in sequence…” As a virtual tourism company, we naturally give precedence to panoramic images. Sometimes we also offer users the opportunity to freely roam around our virtual spaces. To see if the product you have purchased from us can do that, click the Gear icon on your virtual tablet and look for “free roaming.” Note that when free roaming is possible in an application, it may not be available across all devices. For example, the computing limitations of a device such as a smartphone, tablet, or low-end VR headset may sometimes make it impossible to offer free roaming even when it is possible for the same application running on a personal computer or VR headset supported by a powerful graphics card.
If free roaming is important to you and will determine whether or not you purchase one of our products, please click here to see if the product that interests you supports free roaming on your device. When in doubt, please contact us before you make your purchase at contact@flyoverzone.com.
No, our products run on many kinds of devices including smart phones (iOS, Android), tablets, laptops, personal computers (Macintosh, Windows 10), and VR headsets (Google Cardboard, Google Daydream, Oculus, Samsung GearVR, and Vive).
If you wish to purchase a turnkey solution of our products bundled on the VR headset of your choice, please contact our educational distributor, VictoryXR.
No! Every Flyover Zone product has the same user interface. Learn it for one product, and you’re good to go for the rest. Every product starts with a tutorial which takes less than a minute and shows you how to use the user interface.
Here’s what to expect when you launch one of our products. You arrive in the middle of a scene showing the sight to be visited. In front of you is a virtual tablet. Cling to this for dear life during your tour! It will be your source of information and let you move around the virtual world.
In the upper right of the tablet is a map icon. Click it to open a map on the tablet. The blue dots are the stops on the tour. Click on one of them to be teleported to that spot. Once you arrive, the tablet will display an image highlighting the object of interest you should find by looking up from the tablet and around the scene. The tablet also displays a brief text explaining what the object is.
On the right of the tablet is a blue triangle, the audio “play” button. Click on this to get a more detailed commentary on the object of interest.
If you wish to change any settings, click on the gear icon in the upper left of the tablet. Here you can change the language and make other adjustments to make your virtual tour easier and more enjoyable.
Our goal is not to replace real-world tourism. Rather, our goal is to promote real-world tourism by using our applications as new ways to incentivize people to visit the sites we cover. Here are some of the main reasons we think this is likely to happen:
- Pre-trip preparation: Before taking off to your destination, customers can purchase a copy of our applications and go through the whole tour before arriving at their destination (even in the airplane on the way over!). This allows for several benefits such as giving the customer an overview of the site and its layout via our maps.Customers can make notes about specific areas they would like to see on site efore arriving instead of walking around trying to get oriented. By having this knowledge ahead of time, our customers can plan their time on-site to get the most value out of their trips.
- Post-trip recollection: After a trip customers can refresh their knowledge by using our applications. They can share their experience with friends and family, letting them see at home what they saw on their travels.
- Audiovisual guides on site: Using the mobile versions of our applications (iOS and Android), the customer can have access to all 1-3 hours (on average) of content while on-site. The mobile applications essentially become audiovisual guides for the real-world tourist allowing them to learn about the various points of interest encountered on their tours.
- Promote the site: Our virtual tours heighten the awareness of the general public about various sites they may have known even existed. In this sense, our virtual tours are comparable to a free sample of a book on Kindle: the point is not to make it unnecessary to buy the book. To the contrary, the reason Amazon permits free downloads is to boost sales of e-books. In similar fashion, the virtual tour, which costs so much less than the real-world tour in terms of time and money, can let people “sample” the site before taking steps to book a trip to it.
- Safe tourism: Because Covid-19 continues to spread rapidly throughout the world, Flyover Zone is positioned to offer an alternative form of tourism while things return to a new normal. Rome will still be there after Covid-19. Our applications promote staying home and safe during this time and will prepare the physical tourist for when borders reopen and travel returns in our day to day lives.
Flyover Zone thinks that virtual tourism and real-world tourism work hand in glove to support each other.
Technical Support
How to Redeem Keys Bought from the Flyover Zone Store
- Launch the Steam client software and log into your Steam account.
- Click the Games Menu.
- Choose Activate a Product on Steam…
- Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the process.
Important: Ensure that you are activating your game through the Steam application. The Steam website cannot be used to activate a game. If you have not yet done so, you can download and install the Steam application by clicking on the green “Install Steam Now” button here: http://store.steampowered.com/about/
For more information, click here.
Mac:
- Launch the Mac App Store on your Mac.
- Click on your user profile on the bottom left.
- Type your password if needed and then click on Redeem Gift Card on the top right.
- Manually type your code and click ‘Redeem’.
iPhone:
- Open the Apple store
- Click on your profile
- Choose “Redeem Gift Card or Code”
- Click “You can also enter your code manually.” and enter the code
- The app store will automatically start to download and install the app
For more information, visit the Apple Support Page.
- On your Windows 10 device, select Microsoft Store on the taskbar.
- In Microsoft Store, select the See more ( … ) menu (located next to the Search box on the upper right side of the page).
- Select Redeem a code. If you aren’t already signed in, sign in to the Microsoft account on which you want to redeem the code.
- Enter the 25-character code, and then select Redeem. Don’t worry about hyphens, the system takes care of those for you.
For more information, visit the Microsoft Support Page.
- On your Android device, open the Google Play Store app .
- Tap the menu
- Click Redeem
- Enter your code and tap Redeem
For more information, visit the Google Play Support Page.
On the Oculus Website:
- Go to the promo code redemption page in your web browser.
- If prompted, log into your account.
- Under Redeem Code, enter your promo code.
- Click Redeem.
On the PC app:
- Open the Oculus app on your computer.
- Select Settings in the left menu.
- Select the Account tab.
- Click Redeem Code and then enter your promo code.
- Click Redeem.
On the Oculus mobile app:
- Open the Oculus app on your mobile phone.
- Tap Settings in the bottom menu.
- Under Payment tap Redeem Code.
- Enter your promo code and tap Submit.
For more information, visit the Oculus Support page.
