Development and Practice for the VR/MR Guided-Tour System(<Special Issue>Mixed Reality)

Abstract

Nowadays, taking advantage of information science and technology for tourism is promoted by the local governments, and the feasibility of Virtual/Mixed Reality (VR/MR) technology applied for tourism is well studied in the state-of-the-art work. In this paper, we propose a new portable VR/MR system to support the large-area contents reproducing the historical scenes. We applied this system into a guide tour in Asuka-kyo for the tourists and volunteers. Our system consists of three elements: 1) Portable VR/MR Terminal using HMD and Tablet-PC with the backbone system for MR, 2) Simple user interface software, 3) Historical restored objects for VR/MR Contents. Our system is evaluated by questionnaires from the tourists and volunteers in a long term experience. As result, we obtained valuable comments and useful information.