Industry case study · places-of-worship
Visitors explore a cathedral inside and out online
See how a landmark cathedral launched a navigable interior–exterior virtual tour—and how to measure visitor orientation without mistaking data-point counts for attendance or donations.
An Immersive Live research brief about an external industry project. Immersive Live did not deliver this project, and the featured organization does not endorse this site.
Preview
On 4 June 2025, Washington National Cathedral launched a 3D virtual tour built with CoStar Group using drone imagery and Matterport capture from 2024, enriched with informational tags and outdoor routes. The cathedral’s announcement describes a model built from eight billion data points and 2,750 interior capture points. Those figures describe the model; they do not demonstrate increased donations, worship attendance or accessibility for every user. This Immersive Live brief explains continuous navigation across interior and exterior heritage space and proposes an original visitor-orientation pilot with accessible alternatives and successful-task measures.
What you will learn
- Stitching interior and exterior capture supports orientation only when visitor tasks are designed deliberately.
- Data-point and capture-point counts describe models, not fundraising or attendance outcomes.
- Ship accessible alternatives and task-based usability metrics alongside any 3D tour launch.
Reported outcome. The cathedral’s June 2025 announcement reports a model built from eight billion data points, with 2,750 interior capture points and routes into outdoor areas.
Contents
- Executive summary
- Organization and setting
- The problem
- What was built
- Technology and delivery
- Reported outcomes
- Lessons
- Applying the idea to your project
- Proposed pilot
- Risks and constraints
- Sources and methodology
- Invitation
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Sources
- Washington National Cathedral · 2025-06-04 · reviewed 2026-10-23
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