Driving and the tour¶
The cart is not locked to the roads. Drive anywhere; the trunks and the exhibits are solid, and everything else gives way.
Drive¶
- Push forward to drive, back to reverse, sideways to steer.
- Release the throttle to stop. The cart coasts to a halt in about a second.
- Hold Shift (right trigger on a gamepad) to hurry.
- Space (left trigger) brakes harder than coasting.
- With the cart stopped, steering turns it in place.
Driving pace in settings switches between gentle exploration and brisk driving.
Look around¶
- Drag the forest with the mouse or a finger to look around: no button to hold. The sideways look eases back to straight ahead when you let go, and the tilt stays. Not in god's eye, where a drag does nothing and the wheel or a pinch zooms.
- Left and Right, or a gamepad's right stick, turn the view. It eases back to straight ahead when you release, so a glance to the side does not change where you are going.
- Up and Down tilt the view. The tilt stays where you leave it. Tilt up to see the crowns.
Look sensitivity in settings scales how far a push turns the view.
Cameras¶
C steps through four cameras. Camera in settings picks one directly.
| Camera | View |
|---|---|
| Behind the cart | The default. Follows a few meters behind, at head height. |
| High view | Behind and above, looking down at the cart and the road ahead. |
| In the cart | From the seat. The lantern is beside you. |
| God's eye | The whole forest from above the hub, with each grove's name over it. |
Zoom and fly from god's eye¶
In god's eye, scroll the mouse wheel or pinch with two fingers to zoom. The view zooms toward the point under the cursor, or between your fingers, from the whole forest down to about one grove.
Click or tap a tree to show its card, then select Fly there. The cart is set down beside the tree and the camera dives to it, ending on the camera you used before god's eye.
Take the guided tour¶
Q, or the Guided tour button on touch, hands the cart to the tour. The cart follows the roads by itself: out the nearest spoke, around the inner ring, out along a spoke and around the outer ring, then back in to the redwood. Lanterns light the next 50 m of road ahead of it.
At each grove's stop the cart pulls up facing the signpost for 5 seconds and shows a caption: how many books the grove holds, by whom, and its longest. To hear the captions in the system voice, turn on Read each grove aloud on the ring in settings. The first tour on a device opens with a short welcome and a line on how the forest is made; later tours say a line.
The tour says when it has been around every grove, then drives back to the redwood and ends there, facing it. The cart is yours again.
To hop off, steer, brake, or reverse. Q or End tour also ends it. The cart is yours again where you left it.
Go home¶
H, or the home button in the top bar, returns you to the plaza in front of the corpus redwood.
Take a screenshot¶
The camera button in the top bar (on a phone, Screenshot in the three-dot menu) saves a picture of the forest without the controls over it. On a phone it offers the picture to share; on a desktop it downloads it.