Vienna MD

Inspiration

History and technology have been my two biggest passions since I was a Kid. And during my Architecture studies at the university, I had the opportunity to learn more about both.

On one side I learned about Historical Buildings and how the cities have been changing throughout the different eras and events. I found it truly amazing how much history is hidden within a city. And also that in some cities you can find ruins and parts of historical monuments that can directly be linked to historical moments and eras.

On the other side, I learned about AR and its great potential in many use cases, by allowing you to show things that don't exist on top of reality.

So while walking through Vienna`s old city center I found it extremely interesting to imagine how it looked in the past. And since I knew that there were many historical representations and plans of Vienna, I started trying to align them with the real places I was in. First only with my phone and the images on site. I found that in many cases it was possible to find many correlations between historical representations and plans with the state of the city. Making it possible to get a pretty clear picture of what certain parts of the city used to look like.

One Day, while taking a look at one ruin of the Viennese Fortress, I was able to find many historical representations, some plans, and even an old picture that showed what that spot in Vienna used to look like. I was trying to tell my friends how cool it was to be able to picture that, but it was difficult for them to understand since they didn't have the architectural knowledge I had. So at that moment, the idea of reconstructing the representation and pictures in 3D and placing it on-site struck me. And that is how everything started.

What it does

The project allows people to see and experience what specific parts of the city used to look like with historical buildings that no longer exist. The historical AR Visualizations can be used as a tool for cultural heritage mediation, which can be implemented in tours, treasure hunts, and education within the city.

How we built it

The project was built by creating digital reconstructions of historical buildings and displaying them where they used to be.

We started by doing research and getting as much historical information as we could about what certain parts of the city used to look like. This process alone is extremely exciting since there are many amazing secrets hidden within the city we found out, which can not be seen with the naked eye.

We used historical representations, information, archeological plans, and the actual structure of the city to create a digital reconstruction of parts of the city.

The next step was to display the created 3D Models on site. And there is where the Geospatial Capabilities of Google`s ARCore and Adobe Aero play an immense role. We imported them and set everything up there.

Challenges we ran into

One of the challenges we ran into was the project size. Since the digital reconstructions are pretty detailed and huge in size, we had to optimize them. The main challenge here was not loosing much quality while decimating the meshes, creating texture atlases, and downgrading the texture sizes.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We made it work, and even though it's still a small prototype / Proof of concept done for this hackathon, it works. Another really important achievement is that it is intuitive and easy to use. Which in my experience is one of the most important things when letting people without much AR knowledge try it.

What we learned

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an AR Experience is worth a million. By visualizing how historical sites and buildings used to look through AR, it is easier to understand and get excited about history and the amazing stories hidden within a city.

What's next for Vienna MD

The very next step is fine-tuning the proof of concept, since now I know that thanks to Aero and the Geospatial Capabilities the idea works. There are still many things that need to be improved, like the parts of the 3D models that touch the “Real floor”, making the Text appear on the screen and not in the 3d environment, creating a system for the "Small 3D overview of the Scene" so that it appears in front of the user when needed (using the follow function), etc...

The next step is reviewing the legal information about the commercial use of the software. And if legally possible then the next step would be to pitch the idea of implementing the AR Experiences as tools for Tours to Tour Agencies and to the Austrian Tourism Service.

The next step is to expand to other cities, first within Austria and central Europe, since here is where I have more connections, but then eventually to other cities.

Built With

• adobe
• adobe-illustrator
• aero
• blender
• photoshop