The Virtual Cyclorama in a Head Mounted Display

With your smartphone and Google Cardboard you can enter the Battle of Gettysburg Cyclorama in virtual reality.

The conventional virtual tour presents the user-navigable VR space on the screen of a computer or hand-held device. The user sees this as a narrow segment of their visual environment, and must stare at the screen and interact with it by using a mouse, or by dragging on the screen with a finger.

The head-mounted display (HMD), on the other hand, completely dominates the visual field of the user. It therefore isolates them from the distractions of the actual physical environment and encompasses the entire field of view, including the peripheral visual space, with the virtual-reality experience. Navigation is immediate and intuitive; move your head and/or rotate your body to explore the 360° virtual space.

Using a Head-Mounted Display

If you have a HMD device such as the Meta Quest, or the Apple Vision Pro, you will be able to access the virtual-reality Battle of Gettysburg Cyclorama using your headset’s built-in WebXR-compliant browser. We developed the HMD VR Cyclorama using the Acer Windows Mixed Reality headset.

To view the HMD VR Cyclorama using one of these high-end ($400–$3,000+) headsets is a sensory revelation; it seemed that we were experiencing the canvas from a position within the painted battlefield. If you own one, or know someone—perhaps a gamer—with such a device, or if you are able to access one at your local library or college campus, click on the image below to enter the HMD VR experience.

Using Google Cardboard

Combine your smartphone with Google Cardboard to make an inexpensive HMD.

Not nearly as immersive is the simple fold-along-the-dotted-line solution called Google Cardboard. With Google Cardboard, your smartphone becomes the display screen. You can purchase a packaged kit for around $15.

Once you have assembled your Google Cardboard, before inserting your smartphone, touch the image below to enter the HMD version of the Battle of Gettysburg Cyclorama virtual tour. Then you can place your smartphone into your Google Cardboard and explore the Cyclorama. To navigate within the scene, just turn around in a circle.