What is this app
App is part of the bachelor thesis from VSB-Technical University of Ostrava. Main topic of the thesis was nowadays use of Augmented Reality for museum purposes.
Historic context
Augmented reality app contains reconstruction of battle that happened in 1643 on castle Sovinec. Application was consulted with historic experts and the whole scenario comes from authentic reports from 17. century, when swedish army with leader Lennart Torstensson attacked and sieged Sovinec castle on their way back to Sweden. Sovinec crew fought well and brave while being outnumbered. According to a historical report, Torstensson sieged castle with 8000 soldiers against few hundreds of defenders. About 1000 cannon shots were fired, 200 grenades used and many more smaller shots fired from muskeets. Report was written by Johannes Egolf von Westernacht, Vaclav Diesel von Daltice and Zacharias Conradt.
Presentation
Due to relatively small list of supported devices provided from Google ARCore, it was decided that app will have two modes. AR mode and NON-AR mode for unsupported devices, so any visitor of castle Sovinec can launch and view the battle reconstruction. NON-AR mode still provides full-fledged experience with only slightly adjusted controls.
Visitors of castle Sovinec will install the app and open tutorial. After tutorial, model can be placed on any detected flat surface or in the environment created for NON-AR version. Users can then zoom on any particular detail of their liking and can launch any day of the siege. App can be opened and viewed anywhere and user doesnt need to be present at the castle.
Using AR | NON-AR |
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App showcase
Showcase.mp4
CloseUp-Showcase.mp4
Localization
App has full Czech localization and while it would be nice to support more languages, it is currently not planned. The new language localization would also require new voice-over.
Availability
It is recommended to use official mobile stores with the most recent version of the app. On Android devices, app can additionaly be downloaded and installed manually from github release section. Application was primarily developed for Android, but later the decision to also support the iOS devices was made, due to Unity multiplatform benefits.
Official store links:
Google Play
App Store