The centuries-old campus recreated accurately in digital space, presented for the first time today in an hour-long tour
Earlier this week, one of the top four universities in the Philippines, the University of Santo Thomas (UST), announced that it would hold its orientations and tour entirely online this week, as precautions to the ongoing health crisis.
Among the much anticipated events in the opening week of the 409-year-old learning institution was the launch of its Minecraft Server, where new students would familiarize themselves to the UST campus in the blocky world of Minecraft. This tour concluded the week-long ROARientation.
At 3 p.m. today, Aug. 28, the “UST Minecraft Campus Tour” finally happened.
Watch and tour
Kobe Dayao, unit head for sports of UST Tiger TV, and junior jock of Magic 89.9, led the tour, showing freshmen students around the 21.5-hectare campus of UST Manila.
Each aspect of the campus has been meticulously rebuilt in great detail, the structures, the fixtures such as the paintings inside, which have been digitally replicated, and even the “UST cats” that roam the school grounds in real life.
Minecraft is a sandbox video game developed by Swedish company Mojang Studios, where players are given the freedom to be crafty and create their own environment and even entire worlds. It has been ported to various platforms and has become the bestselling video game of all time, having sold over 200 million copies across PCs and consoles. It has 126 million monthly active users as of last count this year.
“Here at UST Tiger TV, we believe every Thomasian needs to have some semblance of an experience touring around UST in their first year. Though this isn’t quite the real thing, it’s still pretty awesome,” explains Kobe.
Around 80 Thomasians worked on the server, perfectly recreating in virtual space what had been known as the oldest existing university in Asia from the ground up. Meanwhile, the office of public affairs provided an itinerary and background information per site, making the tour comprehensive.
Each aspect of the campus has been meticulously rebuilt in great detail, the structures, the fixtures such as the paintings inside, which have been digitally replicated, and even the “UST cats” that roam the school grounds in real life.
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