Dunbar Cave State Park to launch virtual reality tours, making visits possible for everyone

Dunbar Cave State Park is getting ready to launch a virtual reality project that will enable visitors to tour the cave even when they can't physically be onsite.

Earlier this month, officials were in town with cameras, lights and other equipment.

It was an exciting milestone in a project that was originally conceived in January of 2020 by Park Ranger John Ball. His idea was to create a virtual reality film that would make touring Clarksville's historically and archaeologically interesting cave possible for everyone.

Amanda Blount is the Friends of Dunbar Cave (FODC) grants committee Chair, and one of the group members who worked on making the project a reality.

“We had a grant team that wrote the proposal for Humanities Tennessee,” Blount said. “Once we were awarded the grant we put together a public request for quotes from qualified filmmakers. In August of this year we did a walk-thru with interested groups, and this is the team that won the bid. We're very excited for this project.”

Sydney Harris is with Nashville's Arch Media Group.

She is the assistant to the producer on the project.

“So, we're doing a 360° stereoscopic shoot of the cave, which will be really nice for people who cant come into the cave because of handicap accessibility limitations,” Harris said. “They will be able to watch this online. They can put on a virtual reality headset, and it will be almost as if they're in the cave.”

Harris says this is definitely a unique project, because of the 360° and stereoscopic visuals, and that there might even be something next-level with the audio as well.

Members of FODC, Park Rangers, the on-screen participants and the eight-member film crew took a weekend to shoot the footage. The premise was simple, just a guided tour of the cave, with a focus on the cave paintings and markings, some as old as 1,000 years, some from the 1700's and 1800's. Experts will be explaining the meaning and importance of the drawings, markings and landmarks inside the cave.

Demetrius Hnarakis is the director/cinematographer on the project.

“We're working on this production with FODC to bring Park Ranger John Ball's idea to life,” Hnarakis said. “Were following the park rangers, Dr. Jan Simek and archaeologist Beau Carroll on a tour of the cave using some relatively new technology. This tech is finally becoming affordable.

"I have two 360° cameras on a rig, each one has one lens in front and one in back, and they're mounted in a way that allows for stereo-graphic 3D images. With a VR headset you'll see everything as if you were standing in the center of the action.”

Hnarakis and his team planned on going through the cave twice with that set-up, and also shooting additional footage with a standard video camera.

Park Ranger John Ball has been working at Dunbar Cave for about three years.

“I originated this idea, and sort of crowd-sourced it,” Ball said. “I wanted to be able to offer a tour to people during that time of year when the cave was closed, and also create something that was accessible for people who physically can't go on one of our cave tours. We thought it would be cool to make it like an actual virtual reality cave tour.

“I decided to try and make this happen in April of 2020. I approached FODC in January of this year, and encouraged them to apply for the Humanities Tennessee grant. We got that in May, and then put out requests for bids. We met with filmmakers who were interested in the project, and we were fortunate enough to get Demetrius involved.”

Ball says bits and pieces of the project will end up on the Dunbar Cave website, and others will be shared with educational institutions, for their use.

Once all the equipment is acquired, people will be able to take a virtual cave tour at Dunbar Cave State Park, something that will hopefully be offered year-round. Ball says it's possible that the program could be up and running by Summer of 2022, and that more grants have been applied for, to help with the cost of this very expensive technology.

Dr. Jan Simek of the University of Tennessee was excited to be back at Dunbar Cave.

“I'm an archaeologist, and I was actually involved early-on with the discovery and first documentation of the cave art that is here, back in 2006,” Simek said. “There are lots of things that make this cave really cool from an archaeological point of view, two things in particular. The thing that brought me here and keeps bringing me here is that there are cave paintings that were made about 1,000 years ago, so, Mississippian era. There are later Native American markings and writings on the wall, as well. Then, there is a very extensive archaeological site in front of the cave, that was tested when the state acquired this property in the 1970's.

“It has been sealed ever since. It is one of the most complete archaeological sequences that we have in the Eastern United States. It dates back to the ice age, basically. It's a stratified series of occupations that begins about 500 years ago and goes back 12,000 years. This cave was used repeatedly over the course of that time, so you have representation by almost every cultural phase that archaeology has defined, that's very rare.

“We at UT have been involved in documenting cave art for twenty years. We have a more scientifically inclined 3-dimensional modeling process that we use. We actually use two processes, one is LIDAR, which creates very high resolution scans, and we often use photogrammetry in documenting these cave drawings, as well. It's very exciting.”

Find updates on this project at Friends of Dunbar Cave on Facebook, or at the Dunbar Cave State Park website www.tnstateparks.com.

This article originally appeared on Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle: Dunbar Cave State Park to offer a virtual reality tour of the cave