AR Tour Builder and Experience

The AR Tour Builder is a web application that supports the design of AR tours by associating 3D objects and other types of content (e.g., images, audio, video, text) to specific locations on a map. 

The AR Tour Experience is a mobile app that allows visitors to experience phygital tours by overlaying 3D digital objects onto the physical world and providing other types of accompanying information.

• AR Tour Builder: Curators and cultural heritage professionals of heritage sites; Archives working with urban or landscape heritage;Educators; Tourism and local heritage stakeholders.
•   AR Tour Experience: Visitors interested in exploring a location at their own pace; Pupils, students, and other guided groups; Site mediators and tour guides.

• Collaboratively create multilingual AR tours
• Design guided or free-roaming experiences
• Organise and reuse media from online collections
• Place and configure Points of Interest (PoIs) on a map
• Integrate and precisely positions 3D models in real-world settings
• Enrich experiences with rich media (images, audio, video, and more)
• Tours are delivered to the on-site visitor via the AR Tour Experience.

• GPS-based navigation and activation of PoIs
• Explore content in a 3D viewer or in AR on your smartphone
• View virtual content seamlessly overlaid on the real world as you move
• Experience accurately positioned 3D models in real-world locations
• Download tours in advance for uninterrupted on-site use
• Multilingual user interface
• Benefit from smooth performance with optimised content loading
• Dynamically updated to reflect the latest edits made via the AR Tour Builder

• The AR Tour Builder requires only a web browser, an internet connection, basic digital skills, and access to open content assets hosted online (e.g. 3D models, images, audio, texts).
• The AR Tour Experience requires a smartphone (Android) with camera and AR capabilities (see supported devices here),  as well as GPS GPS access and sufficient internet connectivity, depending on the type of content displayed in each tour.

A regional heritage site wishes to offer visitors an AR walk of their site. Using the AR Tour Builder:

1. The curator creates a new project on the AR Tour Builder.
2. They can place Points of Interest on the map.
3. A set of items of various formats, including 3D models,images, textual documents, and links can be added to each POI.
4. Short explanatory text and audio can be added in the desired language(s).
5. Short explanatory text and audio can be added in the desired language(s).
6. The tour can be tested on-site via the accompanying AR Tour Experience mobile app.

Then, a solo tourist is visiting the heritage site. They have a mobile device with GPS enabled and wish to explore the site based on their interests and at their own pace. The visitor may have already downloaded the AR Tour Experience app and selected their desired AR tour or may do this on arrival.

1. The visitor opens the AR Tour Experience app and selects their desired AR tour.
2. As the visitor explores the site, they are prompted about nearby POIs.
3. Moving to a POI, the app presents to the visitor a selection of relevant objects  associated with the respective location.
4. The visitor can choose to visualise a 3D object in overlay AR mode, thus being able to inspect hidden or missing elements at the location.
5. The app provides additional rich content (including images, textual documents, links to external resources such as a quiz), allowing the visitor to explore the location context more deeply.

• A complete AR tour package ready to be experienced by visitors on-site via the AR Tour Experience app, that delivers an engaging, self-guided AR tour curated by the heritage site through the AR Tour Builder, allowing the visitor to explore the site, its locations and context on their own terms.