Grand Canyon ©kashyap_hc
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First Google Maps brought Street View to the Amazon, then to the Great Barrier Reef. Now, granola bar company Nature Valley is bringing the trail to your computer screen with “Trail View”–a new program that lets you digitally hike the trails of three national parks without taking a step outside your house.
The virtual hiking experience takes digital trekkers on more than 300 miles of trails in the Grand Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains and Yellowstone national parks. All you have to do is visit the website, pick a trail, hit Autoplay and the surrounding scene shifts as you move down the trail.
The 360 degree footage was captured by real hikers wearing a backpack-mounted Dodeca 2360, a camera that stitches together simultaneous feeds from 11 multi-directional lenses.
The team behind Nature Valley’s Trail Views see it was a way to introduce the parks to a younger more digitally savvy audience and hopefully inspire them to visit the parks and work to preserve them.
Read more at MSNBC.