Augmented Reality Tourism

pershino writes "Augmented reality is gaining real world application to take us backwards. The BBC has a story about a European Union-funded project providing tourists with computer-augmented versions of archaeological attractions like Pompeii."

Comments

Virtual Robotic Tourism

[HRbnjR]

I want to rent a robot in a far away place which I can control over the internet from home. It would let me drive around the attraction, and have a video camera I could aim (direction, raise, lower), along with a microphone. The software client for my computer would not only display the video/audio stream, but show an interactive GPS map of where I (my robot) am, and provide context sensitive supplementary text, audio, and video information akin to a tour guide - especially at any places my robot could not maneuver. I could even be able to interact with people in these places, and possibly so far as to purchase items that would be shipped to me. I would like to be able to rent such a robot (by the hour) at any major tourist attraction around the world (ie, Pyramids). And, of course, the rates would be really reasonable :P

Make way for the AR Future

[Billy the Mountain]

While tourism might be cool, I think there's a place for AR in our daily lives. If AR were accessible right now, I'd no longer have to decide whether to exercise or play GTA. I think it would be neat if the First Person Shooter could be integrated with a sophisticated body movement sensor and HUD so that you could get your daily 10,000 steps in and, at the same time, boost your score.

BTM

Interesting Extension Idea

[fwitness]

Actually, I remember seeing a virtual reality tour of the famous Notre Dame. We're seeing this sort of thing more and more, mostly with QuickTimeVR.

As with most of these technologies, I think companies are mostly still a little leary because the average computer is still a little bit underpowered. I'm a tech guy and I still use my 700mhz laptop for daily stuff.

Singapore Augmented Reality

[mumblestheclown]

One of Singapore's main historic sites is a series of command bunkers called the "Battle Box." from which the british conducted the "defense" of the city against the Japanese invasion. Being a bit of a World War 2 buff, I paid for the tour. The Battle Box tour was high tech augmented reality - a series of high tech CG stuff and less high tech animatronic whatnots turned what might otherwise be seen as a dull series of bunkers into a living experience.

It was a great idea done at a high budget level. Unfortunately, the underlying story of the defense of Singapore as far as the battle box is concerned is dull ("they've captured our water supply.. hmm.. maybe we should have defended it.. oh well, we're hosed.. i concur.. let's surrender"), but the experience really opened my eyes to the possibilities of this sort of thing.

A simpler solution...

[AmiMoJo]

I'm not too bothered about augmented reality, what I'd really like to see is a kind of "map wiki".

Imagine being able to walk around a city, with a map on your palmtop/phone controlled by GPS. Interesting sites are marked out, and anyone can add their own notes. Instead of virtual tour guides, there could be Wikipedia style entries which IMHO would be much more interesting and less annoying.