I always thought it was such a sad display of destruction that toilets always seemed shattered in abandoned areas...but upon reflection, it's probably to stop people from using toilets that no longer can or will flush, thus leading to a festering biohazard with a smell that could make an elephant jump in fear. Which is impressive because elephants can't jump.
40:35 i love seeing how excited this guy gets over the peeling paint. Mr. Librarian it's people like you who appreciate the truly mundane and see the beauty in the weird small things that make this world a good place to be
honestly these kind of maps are amazing where they can give that creepy feeling without even trying to be a horror map. no random jpeg jumpscares or screams in the distance, just the feeling of exploring an abandoned area all by yourself
9:33 Though if you start developing respiratory issues then you will need to wear a mask of some kind. In the show, Ghost Adventures, one of the hosts actually needs a particle mask because of all the abandoned locations the group had explored. So... maybe you should start doing that sooner rather than later? Investing in a mask to filter out anything that could have an adverse effect on your lungs later in your life?
I usually wear a respirator with P100 filters, but sometimes I don't have one if an explore in unplanned (such as in the recent nursing school video). I agree, it's absolutely essential for anything more than a minute or two, and after an hour or so you can already feel the difference between having one and not.
I believe part of it was Zak, said host, already had respiratory issues beforehand, but all the locations he's been in had aggravated it to a point where he HAS to wear a mask in really old locations.
10:19 padded cells usually are made of strong canvas and a rubbery paint/coating, which is different depending on what country the buildings in. but it either breaks down quickly when not maintained or its removed due to it being easily reused (again, due to where its found). Its actually a bunch of patches all tacked on, which gives it its sort of quilt-y look! there also can be leather or cork crumbles in the floor to cushion it
I love this type of architecture, nature reclaiming the land that was once controlled by humans, grass growing from the buildings that haven’t been maintained in years it’s wonderful
Man, the photogrammetry explorations are leagues above the usual content. I really hope you get the ropes of conducting photogrammetry soon, because like you said it's one of the best chances of keeping a digital record of a physical space before it gets lost. Can't wait for you to get into it and truly become The Librarian, of the digital record of physical abandoned places sort.
At one point you can see the border of the pixels of the cubemap. I'm not very experienced with source mapping, I only made some joke maps, but I have noticed the weird cubemaps
Ever since watching AdamTheWoo, I’ve always wanted to do abandoned exploration! Dead malls, schools, stores, houses... I just haven’t done it yet really (the closest I’ve got was taking a few steps into an abandoned old one room schoolhouse near where I live, but it was in bad shape and I only looked in for a moment and snapped a pic or two) hopefully one day I’ll get into it!
Those handrails are for ADA compliance. youll also see them in hotels and such, where they look like crash bars, but serve as hand rails on walking surfaces.
You know it's gonna be good when you get a notification for a Librarian's video and it's on the Source Engine. Despite the nostalgia it gives me since i grew up playing source games, i love his insights on how some maps feel.
There’s massive Soviet factory in my town that’s been abandoned since 1962 heard it was closed due to a incident that happened inside from what I’ve heard they used to manufacture artillery and other military related items
16:21 High toilets are actually pretty desirable for a place that might have disabled people visit with some frequency, because it makes it easier to stand up off them. There might be some issue with getting onto it if the person is short or has poor/no leg function, but not being able to get up is way worse. Some of the scariest moments of caring for my mother was when she couldn't get up off a public toilet and the possibility of having to call for help and subject her to that new pain and indignity began to loom, as well as the possibility of her falling while trying to stand, which could have been deadly. Thankfully we never had to call for help, but I still appreciate it when places, especially hospitals, have higher toilets. Most of the ones we went to were practically on the floor.
In that final map, your virtual "hands" improved dramatically in quality! They looked mostly like real hands, instead of appendages run thru a meat grinder. _lol_ People are also using photogrammetry and an iPhone to create 3D models for use in modeling software like Blender.
The last thing in Steam VR was absolutely incredible to look at. Walls to be textured with real life itself is absolutely incredible. And this whole thing reminded me of one of my favorite things: exploring manmade areas. I prefer manmade because people won’t build something if there isn’t a purpose to it. I want to be rewarded for exploring every inch of an area. Not just hitting a dead end that seems to be there for no reason at all. That’s why a game like Minecraft doesn’t work that well for me. It’s randomly generated, so it’s filled with useless areas, and rooms that don’t have purposes. So, seeing this is actually very interesting to me.
Photogrammetry is super interesting. I’ve seen a few maps in vrchat that use it and it’s always super interesting to see and take photo’s in. Even if it’s often lower quality and on my headset (the quest 2) it’s left at a lower resolution for performance reasons. It’s still gorgeous even if it’s not a flawless recreation of reality, just like art it’s a beautiful interpretation
Came across your videos while I was sick. I was mentally drained so I couldn't expand my interests long enough for any videos other than yours. It has been extremely therapeutic and meditative. Now I'm obsessed with your content as it is the exact style that I crave. Helped me get through my dreadful sickness. please keep up with the amazing content, you never know if someone's mental health is sometimes relying on it.
I'm in serious need for a new Infra game, and obviously, in Source 2. Also, Infra runs on Source, it shouldn't be possible to port his maps into GMod?, or even mod Infra itself to run it in VR?
People have indeed ported Infra assets. I think when Librarian did a playthrough of gm_Xanthys he pointed out the creator used Infra assets. It's a great gm map exploration vid btw.
I'm leaving for navy bootcamp soon and wont get to watch your videos when they release but i cant wait to binge them when i get out. Also btw love the 60fps
I'm so excited for what I'm sure fans of your videos and urban exploration will do once S&box is out/more accessible. I'm sure there will be gamemodes exclusively for exploration that really lend themselves to VR and the creation of maps like these for it.
One of my favorite channels is The Proper People. Their whole deal is urbex, but they do it (relatively) safely and legally and set a good example for anyone who might want to try it. They've essentially made it a professional career given the quality of videos and how they travel across the globe to explore places.
If you want a good urbex channel then the proper people is a nice choice. They film all sorts of abandoned buildings, it's pretty relaxing just to sit down and watch some exploring, I think that's why I keep coming back to the librarian, normally just a nice relaxing long video to watch
SOO happy I've found you again. Was on GMod Liminal maps today, because your videos got me started on them. Can't wait to see what other videos I can find 🖤🖤
I used to do UrbEx with a friend quite frequently not so long ago here in the UK. Was a lot of fun and we must've visited about 20 places in the years we did it. I've seen abandoned hospitals, flour mills, steelworks, hotels, closed metro tunnels and lime quarries to mention but a few. The biggest thrill often came from just finding a way in. Loved it. 👍
fun fact! there are tools out there (mostly apps like polycam) that make photogrammetry far less labor intensive than it used to be. it's still a lot of work, but it's definitely more accessible! there's some cool videos about it on the Corridor Crew channel if that interests you
The 3D cameras spin around 360 degrees to take hundreds of pictures to apply to the room dimensions as they also measure with lasers. They are good if you want a visual representation of an existing space. If you have a big room you need to set the tripod down in multiple places. They remember the locations based on gps so you can combine them. I found the 2D plan camera did not work so well in an area with lot's of windows because it starts to lose where the wall is and start measuring things across the road.
Where I live there used to be a porcelain factory but they had to close it because of money problems and when it was empty for a few years I went in and it was really cool, lots of old porcelain things and glasses and notes with lots of things written on them even my grandmother worked in this factory
Photogrammetry can be done manually, but there are AIs being made that can do it from images fairly well. I mean, other than that, you could use something out of a autonomous vehicle (Like LIDaR from a Waymo or FSD from a Tesla. Waymo is a bit secretive about their AI, but Tesla has shown they can fully reconstruct a virtual environment very faithfully, its actually really cool)
In Georgia we used to have an old fabric mill and really old mill houses in an old fenced in area. I explored it with friends years ago, mind we had respiration masks, place that old no clue what they used and left. Sadly they cleared it all out long ago to put in a new factory.
That realistic map was almost a different level of spooky my man It's actual pictures, you might even see something... strange captured in deep dark halls!
Amazing video, love watching these just before sleep so comfy! You also said that you'd like to learn how to create those picture real spaces, you should try Polycam, you take a bunch of photos from all different angles, it takes both the physical shapr of an object and the texture of it, its really easy to use, afterwards you can export it as different formats like .obj
Hey Libraian, I was thinking back to your Necro Forest video. In that video you explain how a server with a ton of people actually playing a zombie survival mod of some sort would be tons of fun. Im not sure if you thought of this but what if you were the one to revive some of the Gmod community and make multiplayer experiences with your community to enjoy? Like possibly a zombie survival, horror, exploration, maybe even dark RP. I think that would be awesome
Having been a Security Guard for a site you'd get urban explorers at, I have to say, there is nothing scarier than going from dead quiet coming up to 11 at night when you get off, and then you hear a echoing mumbling snaking out of some cracked door out of the blue.
Librarian, if you have any kind of decent camera, you can make photogrammetry scenes of the places you go to. There are plenty of programs out there that are pretty easy to use, some free and others paid for. I used my phone to do a couple of photogrammetry things a couple years ago and I was impressed by what came out even back then, I can only imagine how much easier and better quality it is nowadays. There's plenty of tutorials on how to do it, it's probably WAY easier than you'd think.
A note on your comment about “how are this exit signs still lit?” Some exit signs are lit by glowing tritium, and can last for nearly 25 years without electricity. Now, ideally, you wouldn’t leave a mildly radioactive, very expensive exit sign in a building when you leave, but hey, just saying.
23:09 Buildings that still have some perceived use (property that can be sold and renovated after being left), the power is left running to these places to keep thiefs from stealing the copper wiring.
You should explore rp_metro refuge, it’s a really beautiful exploration map and also very creepy, it is similar to the underground parts of some rp maps.
Fun fact! High ceilings in that hospital/asylum, depending on the time period of the building, would have been done because of a lack of air conditioning, leaving VERY warm rooms. So, building the walls high caused the heat to naturally rise, leaving a lot more room for a more tolerable temperatures so the patients aren't roasting in the rooms!
little urbex trick. while outside a location thats not 100% private, walk around on the phone while gesturing at a clipboard with white paper or whatever on it, and over to the building. once you hang up enter. really disarming to a third party viewer
Hey Librarian, do you ever watch Vagrant Holiday here on RU-vid? He did this great video where he explored McNeill Island in Seattle which is a max security facility. He finds abandoned houses and even goes inside the old prison. I think you'd love the video if you haven't seen it yet. EDIT: It is his Forbidden Island episode
Anybody who would call the cops on someone exploring abandoned property has no concept of property and as such does not deserve the right to property or autonomy. And those that believe that owners owe trespassers any expectation of safety are equally inferior, and dangerous. They should be barred from societies benefits, and made to shoulder the harshest of societies burdens until the change or until the end of their natural life.
I learned photogrammetry for forestry purposes, it takes a lot of difficult calculations involving the aperture and distance of cameras, light physics, understanding how light bending can be used to recreate landscapes, using infrared to determine things about what you're looking at and trying to minimize distortion. it's almost as much of an art as a science
Those photogrametry VR spaces definitely have been captured in some abandoned place in Germany. Some of those graffiti where pretty damn vulgar German. Interesting to see a place in such heavy decay. Usually abandoned places such as this don't last long. It's custom to tear everything down and either leave the empty lot to nature, or usually a new owner already waits to have the place used again.
Hey, I'm Kinda new here, but could i interest you in The Submachine Series by Mateusz Skutnik? all I really feel like saying is that I loved playing through it, its a puzzle game but looking back on it a lot of the areas seem like these ever so famous Liminal Spaces
22:57 I hear a story on video of a person I think a youtubers friend, falling through 2 stories in a abandoned hospital, they ended up in the hospital I think okay. It was so long ago, it might've been not a hospital, I couldn't say for sure.
I'd love to get 3D scans of urbex locations to convert into VR urbex (and not just Gmod maps, probably standalone VR games). I have the decades of game development experience to where this would be trivial, though I lack good locations to explore and a good camera to get photos with.
It's unfortunate that you have to _`spot-hop`_ through the metal foundry maps. They would be so much more immersive if you could walk through them. I realize that they were recorded with photography; but, if something, the coding, the engine, what have you, were more powerful, then, it would be possible to walk and that would make the environment seem more life-like. Even if you were still prevented from directly interacting with the environment, opening doors, etc.
