ABSTRACT
The Xitou Nature Education Area has attracted a huge tourist crowd due to its convenient transportation, perfect catering and accommodation conditions, welfare measures such as transportation and subsidies from the local government, as well as the electric vehicle service provided by the park for the disabled. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there were about 1.5 million visits each year, resulting in the trails and facilities nearly saturated, causing potential damage and stress to the environment. The impact of the epidemic has reduced the number of tourists in the forest recreation area, which just to provide the park with a chance to breathe. In addition to the diversion measures, online virtual reality tours can be used to relieve the tourist crowd. This research cooperates with the existing server of the National Taiwan University Experimental Forest Management Office to complete the construction of the functions of the 720 panoramic tour platform, including visitor number statistics, settings, VR glasses, viewing angle, hot spots, map sand table, and tour guide. We also finished 22 aerial panoramas, 54 ground panoramas, and 13 indoor panoramas. The panoramic images shot in the air and on the ground of the park are linked and presented by the mobile digital panoramic virtual reality navigation platform developed by this research. The various sceneries in the park can therefore be presented through the internet and can be combined with the content of the tour guide to provide tourists and disabled people who cannot visit the scene in person the immersive experience. Moreover, when the manpower or budget for interpreting tours is insufficient in the future, in addition to reducing the workload of the interpretation in the park, an interactive interface can also be added through the platform to provide detailed interpretation information on the scenery, animals, and plants of each base, thereby improving the interpretation effect and tourism quality.