Augmented Reality
Does it sound farfetched to combine the real and the virtual world? Not at all. Ordina recently developed a number of tourism Layars as an assignment for the Gelders Overijssels Bureau for Tourism. Layars are graphic browsers that project tourist information over the images captured by the eye of a Smartphone’s camera while its user is present in a specific area. Interested parties are now able to install Layars on their Smartphone free of charge, in order to learn more about the tourist attractions and events surrounding them, while strolling through Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede, Twente and the Hanzesteden along the IJssel .
Does it sound farfetched to combine the real and the virtual world? Not at all. Ordina recently developed a number of tourism Layars as an assignment for the Gelders Overijssels Bureau for Tourism. Layars are graphic browsers that project tourist information over the images captured by the eye of a Smartphone’s camera while its user is present in a specific area. Interested parties are now able to install Layars on their Smartphone free of charge, in order to learn more about the tourist attractions and events surrounding them, while strolling through Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede, Twente and the Hanzesteden along the IJssel .
Does it sound farfetched to combine the real and the virtual world? Not at all. Ordina recently developed a number of tourism Layars as an assignment for the Gelders Overijssels Bureau for Tourism. Layars are graphic browsers that project tourist information over the images captured by the eye of a Smartphone’s camera while its user is present in a specific area. Interested parties are now able to install Layars on their Smartphone free of charge, in order to learn more about the tourist attractions and events surrounding them, while strolling through Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede, Twente and the Hanzesteden along the IJssel .
Does it sound farfetched to combine the real and the virtual world? Not at all. Ordina recently developed a number of tourism Layars as an assignment for the Gelders Overijssels Bureau for Tourism. Layars are graphic browsers that project tourist information over the images captured by the eye of a Smartphone’s camera while its user is present in a specific area. Interested parties are now able to install Layars on their Smartphone free of charge, in order to learn more about the tourist attractions and events surrounding them, while strolling through Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede, Twente and the Hanzesteden along the IJssel .
Challenge
Since the arrival of the iPhone and the Android, mobile applications (apps) have emerged and are becoming very popular. And rightly so, as they offer the user extra functionality immediately. It really becomes very interesting when the mobile phone starts moving along and acting intelligently. Augmented Reality enables this. The Innovation Team from the Gelders Overijssels Bureau for Tourisms (GOBT) soon realised that Augmented Reality offered the tourism market endless applications and opportunities.
When Augmented Reality is used for consumer applications it has to be useful and make life easier. Augmented Reality acts as a completely new method of offering tourist information to the tourism industry. This new technology offers visitors to a city the possibility of an interactive city tour, choosing the route themselves and then deciding what they would like to hear more information on. This makes the tour accessible to a wide audience and more personal at the same time.
As knowledge and innovation centre for the tourism sector in the East of the Netherlands, it is the GOBT’s duty to act quickly on trends such as trans-reality, the amalgamation of the real (physical) and the virtual world. This is called Augmented Reality. This technology allows objects to appear in 3D when they are not actually there. Anticipating the next generation of visitors who will no longer be thinking along linear lines, but who will refer to the virtual world when deciding what to do and how to fill in their free time, the GOBT has taken the first steps on the road to Augmented Reality.
Augmented Reality offers the sector a golden opportunity to enrich the experiences of its visitors. In doing so, it also stands to draw many more visitors to its region(s). Inspired by the implementation of Augmented Reality for the Van Gogh Vrijetijdshuis in Nuenen, Brabant, the GOBT invited Ordina to assist in developing its Augmented Reality 2010 project.
Solution
Ordina developed a number of tourist Layars with 200 Points of Interest (POI’s) for the Gelders Overijssels Bureau for Tourism (GOBT). The Layar, software developed on Dutch soil, is a newcomer to the telecommunications world. It layers digital information over the camera image captured by a Smartphone. Additional information is added to the user-interfaces as we know them with ‘actual’ real-time images. In actual fact, a layer of computer generated images are projected to make it seem as if it is happening in the real world. Real 3D, in other words.
During a few workshops, facilitated by Ordina’s innovation-experts, ten experience concepts were developed by GOBT-partners such as Bureau Hanzesteden, Gelders Erfgoed, MKW, RBT KAN and the Twents Bureau for Tourism. These concepts formed the basis for the further integration of Augmented Reality in the tourist marketing of Gelderland and Overijssel.
Ordina’s Consultants together with Clockwork subsequently developed the technical architecture for a Content Management System. This system enables employees from the tourism bureaus in Gelderland and Overijssel to access the Points of interest for mobile applications and other alternative augmented browsers, for example Google Maps, independently. This process included the content selection and development with each partner as well as the training of staff members to efficiently use the Content Management System.
Our client
In Gelderland and Overijssel, the Gelders Overijssels Bureau for Tourism (GOBT) is the organisation responsible for the development of knowledge and innovation in the tourism sector. In collaboration with other Regional Bureaus for Tourism (RBT’s), the GOBT develops multi-regional products and focuses on the tourist marketing for foreign markets.
Result
Ordina’s innovation experts organised interactive workshops for the GOBT and its stakeholders in order to share their vision on trans-reality with marketers from the Eastern parts of the Netherlands. The goal was to demonstrate the meaning of Augmented Reality for the tourism industry and to form a vision on this.
The experience concepts developed during these workshops were captured in a Content Management System. Ordina developed the system in such a way that users from the different regional bureaus for tourism are able to independently access new Points of Interest and experience concepts for their own target audiences. Thus rendering Augmented Reality the ultimate marketing tool for marketers from Gelderland and Overijssel.
This is the top end of Experience and Immersion Marketing. The visitor is in complete control while they are in and around the product’s vicinity; offering marketers and innovative entrepreneurs an endless array of opportunities to entice and win the visitor over. Now and in the future.
This means that visitors wandering through Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede, Twente and the Hanzesteden along the IJssel , currently receive interesting information on the rich past of these eight cities and regions in the Eastern parts of the Netherlands via their iPhone or Android. They explore this region and see all it has to offer by making a selection from the 200 Points of Interest, ranging from Roman settlements to scenes of the Liberation at the end of the Second World War. Additional information such as ‘you can eat here’, ‘you can sleep here’ and ‘that is the oldest building in the street’ will soon be added to the information provided when approaching a Point of Interest.