Farstep guide

A free virtual field trip to the wonders of the world (3D, in the browser)

Ten landmark pages on this site each carry a real-time 3D model you can walk through in a browser, a narrator reading the tour stops, and the key facts. Nothing to install and no account. This is how to use them for a class, a homeschool lesson or a family evening.

What each page has

• The story of the place and its key facts (where, when it was built, size, UNESCO status), written first, so it reads like an article even without 3D.
• A 3D walk that loads when you tap Start (about 1 to 3 MB). Drag to look; walk with the on-screen stick on a tablet or W A S D on a laptop.
• Gold markers in the scene open a card for that spot, tagged Known, Theorised or Folklore.
• Hear the guide: the narrator reads each stop, with the transcript printed underneath. Pages exist in nine languages.
• How to visit the real place, with a link to the official site.

The ten sites

• Stonehenge: Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England. Midwinter sunset on the axis.
• Everest summit ridge: Mahalangur Himal, on the border of Nepal and China (Tibet). Real elevation data · 8,849 m.
• Grand Canyon: Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, USA. USGS elevation · South Rim.
• Yosemite Valley: Yosemite National Park, Sierra Nevada, California, USA. USGS elevation · beneath El Capitan.
• Avebury: Avebury, Wiltshire, England. The great henge.
• Newgrange: Brú na Bóinne, County Meath, Ireland. Exterior · the mound and kerb.
• Skara Brae: Bay of Skaill, Mainland Orkney, Scotland. Neolithic village, Orkney.
• Callanish Stones: Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Isle of Lewis.
• Carnac: Carnac, Morbihan, Brittany, France. The Ménec alignments.
• Hadrian's Wall: Housesteads, Northumberland, England. Open LiDAR terrain · Housesteads.

All ten are also on one page: wonders of the world in 3D.

A 30-minute lesson plan

• 5 minutes: read the page intro aloud and look at the key facts. Ask what the class expects to see.
• 10 minutes: start the walk on a projector or on tablets. Find every gold marker.
• 10 minutes: play the narrator stops. For each one, ask: how do we know this? Cards tagged Known have solid evidence; Theorised means historians still argue; Folklore is a legend.
• 5 minutes: compare two sites. Stonehenge and Newgrange both line up with the winter solstice: what does that suggest about the people who built them?

Before the lesson

• Open one page on the classroom device first: the 3D needs WebGL, which some school browsers turn off. If it is off, the text, facts and narrator still work.
• Stonehenge, Avebury and Newgrange have a Then button that switches to a labelled reconstruction of how the site may have looked.
• The 3D models are built from open elevation data and published measurements. They are reconstructions for learning, not photographs.

On a phone or tablet

The Farstep app (Android and iPhone) has the same ten sites with smoother graphics, a guided tour that walks you from stop to stop, passport stamps and offline play. Stonehenge is free in the app; the other sites are one-time packs.