Responses by Stephanie Land, senior integrated producer; Jessica Lautin, director of content strategy; and Luobin Wang, senior creative technologist, G&A.

Background: “The app makes it possible for anyone anywhere in the world to feel they are taking a tour through the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine in New York City,” says Jessica Lautin. “Typically, we have a more targeted audience in mind when we design. But the client wanted to create an experience that welcomed all—and not just Orthodox Christians—through St. Nicholas’s doors. Nothing can quite replicate the experience of stepping inside the light-filled narthex and nave, but the techniques we used do immerse visitors in its sights and sounds. And the app offers additional content and views—from above and up high—that a visitor wouldn’t get without using it. So, someone can choose to take a tightly curated tour through all of the spaces. They can also pause to learn more about the Shrine’s history, iconography and Greek Orthodox rituals at their own pace.”

Favorite details: “We are proud of the way the guiding principles for this experience appear throughout,” Lautin says. “At the start of the project, we discussed how the Shrine—and in turn the app guiding people through it—would be a ‘light on the hill.’ That’s a big goal for an app, but we set out to achieve it in several ways: The tone of the app is welcoming. We worked hand in hand with the client to create content about Orthodox Christianity and the church’s architecture that was precise in its accuracy while also accessible and engaging to a layperson. And the ‘Light a Candle’ feature in the app is not just a place to light a single digital candle but to share prayers with a vast community.”

Challenges: “The key to designing any meaningful experience—but especially one with this type of content—is building a close relationship with the client, listening thoughtfully and respectfully, and reflecting what you’ve heard and learned in what you create,” says Stephanie Land. “We relied on the client to provide us with research briefs that informed the content. We went through a very thorough collaboration and review process on our scripts and image selection. And we were sensitive not just in what we wrote but how we wrote it.”

Alternate paths: “We might consider newer technologies, such as NeRF or Gaussian Splatting, for an even better visual representation of the building and its surroundings,” says Luobin Wang. “We did small tests using the current edge technologists, but it wasn’t ready for production use yet. In 2024, this tech approach has shown great improvement and could potentially show photorealistic renderings on a phone in real time.”

Technology: “We used RealityCapture for processing photogrammetry data, Blender for high-res 3-D rendering, Vue.js and three.js for the front-end experience, and Strapi and Google Cloud for the back end,” Wang explains. “This is the first time that G&A has utilized the photogrammetry technique along with our tech and film team, who were deeply involved in the creative process. Countless planning was done to make sure we were able to do the scanning onsite, render out the background video that matched content pacing and utilize an optimized 3-D model for the real-time exploration of the nave.”

Special technical features: “Photogrammetry is primarily used for high-detailed 3-D reconstruction. One of the challenges we were faced with was how we were going to optimize the model for real-time use,” Wang says. “The scanning was challenging enough due the smooth, almost shadeless materials used by the church’s architect—many geometries had to be rebuilt using 3-D modeling software. Downsizing the polygon count of the 3-D mesh while preserving the same visual consistency also proved to be a real challenge. We solved it by doing a ‘virtual’ scan using thousands of 3-D renderings at different angles of the high-res model and used it for another round of photogrammetry reconstruction. Without the challenge of dealing with real-life scenarios such as reflections, unreferenceable features or challenging angles, we created a small sized model for real-time use without sacrificing too much visual fidelity.”