Mobile AR Performance Issues in a Cultural Heritage Environment

Abstract

Due to technological advances, augmented reality has seen fast growth in the last decades and numerous implementations of this technology have been in favour for a consequent growth of popularity. For this article, an augmented reality system is implemented for smartphone and tested in a cultural heritage environment to evaluate the system performance in the context. In the first stage, several prototypes were developed, and performance tests were executed in a controlled environment to select a solution to implement and evaluate in-situ. The solution found is a marker-based system, held with Vuforia SDK. When the marker is lost for being outside of the field of view, the system will be based on natural features to accomplish user tracking. Visitors from a cultural heritage space – the Roman Ruins of Conimbriga – tested the app and evaluated it. They considered that the presented system should be implemented in the referred cultural space, as well as in other archaeological spaces.