More than beautiful images
360° Virtual Tours
Let decision-makers, investors, and community members walk through a BNG habitat or nature recovery site before it exists.
The Ruby Cube produces immersive 360° virtual tours of proposed BNG habitats, landscape regeneration projects, and conservation sites, built from the same precise data sources as our 3D renders.
360° Virtual Tours
Where a render shows a single moment and an animation tells a linear story, a virtual tour hands control to the viewer letting them explore the space at their own pace.
Stakeholder Engagement at Scale
Investor Confidence
Planning & Regulatory Support
Bringing Your Projects to Life
Get specialist virtual tours tailored to your project. Visualise, communicate and present BNG, ecology, retail, architectural and landscape regeneration projects with 360° virtual tours that support investment decisions.
360° Virtual Tours for BNG, Habitat Banks & Nature Recovery Sites
A virtual tour lets decision-makers, investors, and community members walk through a BNG habitat or nature recovery site before it exists. Where a render shows a single moment and an animation tells a linear story, a virtual tour hands control to the viewer — letting them explore the space at their own pace, from their own perspective, from anywhere in the world.
Why Use Virtual Tours for BNG & Ecology?
Stakeholder Engagement at Scale
Traditional public consultations are constrained by geography and time — a community event in a village hall reaches a fraction of the people affected by a development. A virtual tour can be shared via email, embedded on a consultation website, and accessed by thousands of people simultaneously. It doesn't close at 9pm. It doesn't require travel. And every visitor gets the same high-quality experience.
Investor Confidence
Habitat bank operators and biodiversity credit sellers face a fundamental challenge: their product — habitat — doesn't exist yet when they need to sell it. A virtual tour of the proposed site, built from the habitat management plan and terrain data, gives credit buyers a credible, immersive experience of the ecological asset they are investing in. This accelerates credit sales and reduces buyer hesitation.
Planning & Regulatory Support
Virtual tours can be submitted as supplementary planning documents alongside traditional photomontages and renders. They provide planning officers and committee members with a spatial understanding of the proposed BNG scheme that static imagery cannot convey — particularly valuable for complex multi-habitat sites with varied terrain.
The Ruby Cube produces immersive 360° virtual tours of proposed BNG habitats, landscape regeneration projects, and conservation sites, built from the same precise data sources as our 3D renders. They run in a browser, require no downloads, and work on desktop, tablet, and mobile.
What Our Virtual Tours Include
360° Panoramic Navigation
Users move through the virtual environment using click-and-drag or touchscreen controls, looking in any direction from each viewpoint. Multiple viewpoints can be linked together to create a connected walk through the site.
Hotspot Information Points
Embedded hotspots within the tour surface contextual information as users explore — habitat type descriptions, species lists, biodiversity metric data, management commitments. These make the tour a self-guided educational experience as well as a visual one.
Seasonal Variation
Tours can include multiple seasonal versions of the same viewpoint — summer, winter, and early establishment — giving viewers an understanding of how the habitat will appear across the year and develop over time.
Branding & Accessibility
All tours are delivered with custom branding, project title screens, and optional voiceover narration. They meet WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards with keyboard navigation and screen-reader-compatible hotspot labels.
Ready to visualise your project?
Get in touch by sending our contact form, or call 0203 286 7661 to discuss your brief.
Why use Virtual Tours?
Habitat Bank Marketing
Give potential BNG credit buyers a credible, immersive preview of the habitat site. Embed the tour in your habitat bank prospectus or on a dedicated project page. Share it with ecologists and developers who need to assess habitat quality remotely.
• Embed on habitat bank sales pages
• Share directly with credit buyers and responsible parties
• Include in investor and funder packs
Public Consultation
Share a link with local residents, community groups, and consultees. The tour runs entirely in a browser — no login, no download, no technical knowledge required. Gather consultation responses directly from within the tour interface if required.
• Consultation website integration
• QR-code access for printed consultation materials
• Response collection and analytics on viewer engagement
Planning Committee Presentation
Display the tour on a screen to a planning committee, allowing members to navigate the site in real time.
Dramatically more effective than static boards for communicating complex multi-zone habitat schemes to non-specialist committee members.
TECHNICAL DELIVERY
Tours are delivered as hosted web experiences accessible via a unique URL — shareable by email or embeddable in any website. We provide analytics on viewer sessions, average dwell time, and hotspot engagement, giving you data on how stakeholders are engaging with your project.
• Browser-based — no downloads or plugins required
• Compatible with desktop, tablet, and mobile
• VR headset compatible (Oculus, HTC Vive) for exhibition use
• Hosted on secure UK servers — available 24/7
• Analytics dashboard included
FAQs
Is LiDAR data available for my site?
DEFRA LiDAR data covers the vast majority of England at 1m resolution, with 0.25m data available for many areas. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have equivalent datasets from their respective environmental agencies. We check coverage at brief stage and advise on alternatives if needed.
Can you model proposed earthworks alongside existing terrain?
Yes — we regularly work with civil engineering cut-and-fill drawings, berm design data, and wetland excavation plans to produce accurate models of proposed terrain alongside the existing LiDAR ground surface.
Can I use the terrain model in my own GIS or CAD software?
Yes — we deliver terrain models in standard formats (OBJ, FBX, DXF, GeoTIFF) compatible with ArcGIS, QGIS, AutoCAD, and other platforms. Specific format requirements should be discussed at brief stage.
What our clients say
READY TO VISUALISE YOUR PROJECT?
Tell us about your project. We will tell you exactly what we can do.
Whether you have a detailed brief or just an early idea, we offer a free 20-minute scoping call to talk through your project, the formats that will work best, and what we need from you to get started.
Request your free 20-minute scoping call