Friday 28 March 2014

The Augmented Reality (AR) – a new Digital Immersion Service


No no, no Doctor Who in his TARDIS (Image 1) and Timey-wimey-stuff here… But a new way to experience tourism thanks to Augmented Reality (AR) and its ability to procure a time travelling experience to visitors.


Image 1. Doctor Who's paintings (source: intbride.blogspot.fr)

Last 17th and 18th of March 2014 have been held in Deauville the second Numeric Tourism forum. Tourism is nowadays increasingly adapting itself to new technologies and when the fancy Google Glass is making the headlines, the whole Augmented Reality (AR) topic has also been brought back to actuality. Once used as experiments, this technic is starting to be gradually used by more cultural and touristic institutions. Abroad with cities such as Rio de Janeiro or in France with  Lille, Versailles, Cherbourg, Cluny and many other cities or cultural attractions, numerous AR projects have been launched those last years.

But what is this new technology and what does it implies for cultural institutions?

Definition:


The augmented reality we are going to talk about now is the one easy to access for any tourist, which use only and directly customers' own device(s). We are not going to talk about the other systems existing to use AR (e.g. binoculars, Google glasses, etc.) or about its use in Events (another article written by Kate Sampara and Laetitia Vartanian in this blog already dealt with this part last January).

 The augmented reality, also called virtual reality in the 80’s, is not really new. First experimentations have been undertaken in USA in the 60’s by Ivan Sutherland. Yet, it is during the 90’s that its use increased significantly in the medical industry. It is now a technology in rapid expansion and reaching numerous industries such as the tourism one. 
The AR is then the superposition of a virtual 2D or 3D reality layer – done thanks to a prior 2D or 3D modelisation of the area – on real pictures/movies taken by a device‘s integrated camera. To ensure a perfect blend between real images and virtual ones, the device positioning needs to be known via geo-localisation.
To do so, users need a device with an integrated camera, internet connection, GPS and an AR software previously downloaded: in short, a smartphone or tablet. However, as described in the Echo Touristique's article “tourisme numérique: les défis de la réalité augmentée” of the 26th of march 2013, the camera's sensors are not every time necessary. It is the case for instance of the “fake AR” which only uses the geo-localisation of the device. Then, customers doesn’t need any integrated camera but just to position their device where the AR movie has been filmed and an internet access to visualize the reconstitution, like in the case of the Abbey of Cluny (Image 2).


Image 2. Cluny Augmented reality (source: l'Echo Touristique, 2013)

The AR allows mobile or tablet users to experience past centuries as if they were part of it. The Coliseum in Roma, Berlin’s wall, Versailles ‘gardens etc. are all attractions using AR applications bringing back to life ancient time just by pointing equipped devices towards the monuments.
At the opposite of the google glass where the augmented reality is seen through the glasses the user here need to download one of the numerous applications available on smartphone and/or tablet to get access to a specific AR.

Tourism and AR:
  • Individual and personalized city tour/ cities as if you were in a museum: new interpretations of attractions
First users of the AR are the tourism industry and the advertising industry mostly linked to the tourism one (such as “Meet the NSW locals” for Destination NSW, Australia. See the video's link below).
Thanks to the increasing number of mobile or tablet applications offering AR tools, the customer is now able to discover a city or a museum by only using its phone/tablet.
For instance, a guided tour in the heart of the city of Lille is available to any smartphone or tablet user willing to download the application Urbik. This one then offers visitors to discover the city on their own and get information about the monuments they are pointing at with their devices. Like in a museum, a label appears then on the screen to let him/her discover the history of the monument and to suggest him/her other parts of the city to discover.
  • Bring back to life disappeared monuments/ a new kind of tourism: time travel 
But this technic is not only available for ruins of existing monument. Not known for its fortification sites, Cherbourg (Image 3) has, thanks to the AR, brought back to life a disappeared part of its heritage and then developed a new kind of touristic attraction within its old city.
Born from a partnership between the video company Biplan and the History department of the University of Picardie, value added has been brought to the historic part of the city since it is now possible to discover Cherbourg back 300 years ago, with its fortified castle. Unknown even by its citizen, the city can now promote with the AR a time travel through a very important part of its heritage gone and forgotten for centuries. And Cherbourg is not the only city or touristic place to use this technology. Biplan is also working on a “D-Day Landing beaches” AR project bringing to life an important part of our contemporary history.
More than just offering a new support to do touristic discoveries, AR is about customer involvement. With a personal and unique experience which raises interest and motivation to self-education, AR provides added value through visually enhanced time travels.
Easy to use and downloadable 24/7, it is no wonder that cities and museum followed closely the AR development to promote their cultural and historical heritage.


Image 3. Augmented reality of the Cherbourg's castle. Copyright: Biplan (source: l'Echo Touristique, 2013)

  • A clever electronic touristic guide
Finally the AR is also used to help customers to compare or get information about touristic attractions or restaurants. For instance, once in front of three restaurants, pointing your device on them will help you to make your choice thanks to internet connection transmitting directly to your device their main characteristics; prices, menu, internet users’ rate, expositions’ catalogues, history, and so on. In 2011 the application CultureClic already “augmented” 1350 museums and monuments in partnership with la Réunion des musées nationaux and Gallica’s archives from the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

Costs:


This technology involves different stages and processes. The more you spend time on different stages, the more the project costs. Still in its online article of the 26th of march 2013, l’Echo Touristique mentioned that a project only based on a 3 minutes long reconstruction-movie by AR will cost around €10 000 to €30 000 (like Cluny’s project). Yet, a more complex project like the one undertaken in Cherbourg will cost around €100 000 due to the elaborate 3D modelisation required, extra historical research and partnerships done with university and AR’s researchers.  It means a rather substantial investment that has to be taken into account seriously in order to maximize its benefits afterwards.

Critics:

Of course this is an application with a program and the innovations are still limited and need to be improved. It is obviously not possible to point at any kind of monument that you would like to get information about, but with the participative characteristic of the web 2.0, added content is likely to increase exponentially. For now this is a good way for a traveller to learn and get information easily about the main monuments and other heritage taking part in the history of a visited place/city.

It also enhances the personal experience from the traveller point of view. Indeed, the involvement of the tourist in the discovery process through these downloadable applications is a new playful and entertaining way to discover differently a touristic area. It increases or improves the added value of a city tour.

Finally, customers don’t have to buy new devices or other audio-visual services to do the visit since they only have to download the application on their own device. Easy to access the service is also easy to use.

From the businesses side, it is also a good and new way to promote and communicate about a destination since the informations are easily broadcasted on the customer devices and through the AR applications. Tourism businesses can then take advantage of their designing power on the application to sponsor and push the user to go to specific places and then gain extra revenue out of this kind of promotion through sponsorships.

This is a way not only to attract history lovers, but also tech-savvy people, keen to play with their device. It is also called as a “gamification” of tourism thanks to this new way to explore places (as mentioned in an article from TourismLink.eu).
Despite a very attractive marketing done through those, most of the time free of charge AR applications (e.g. Versailles’ garden, etc.), some of them still remain available only on Apple devices (e.g. OnSpot). Yet, it is known that almost 75% of the smartphone and 63% of the global tablet markets in 2013 were held by Android (as mentioned in the articles from JDN.com and ZDNET.fr websites). It then limits the impact and the revenue the touristic institution implementing the application could have earned from it.

Interesting for business aiming to get data from customers thanks to personal information required and retained by the applications, this tool can also become dangerous for customers life: for privacy reason first, but also for safety reason since the customer is isolated in its virtual world while wandering in the city to discover it from new “eyes”. Then not totally aware of the real world interactions, accidents could quickly happen.

Finally, this subject is also bringing new concern in the tourism industry since tour guides are afraid to see their roles decrease in the close future due to these new technology tools.


Written by Samantha Pinet & Marisol Bustos Otero.

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