My goal for the Major Project module is to design an application that will rebuild elements of Pontefract Castle using augmented reality. Using this application, a user would be able to point their mobile device towards specific locations within Pontefract Castle and see them rebuilt in augmented reality.
According to Historic UK (2022) there are at least 188 castles remaining in England. Although there are so many, there is an extremely low amount of applications relating to them. Searching through the Google Play store for locations of famous English castles, I wasn’t able to find any applications related to them. After entering a more specific search, I still wasn’t able to find any applications tailored to the individual castles.
English Heritage Days Out (2021) is an application that allows user to search for specific castles around England. Once a specific castle is found, the user can preview specific aspects such as opening times and routes to the location. The application provides a brief description of the location but nothing more.
Although many castle are available for preview within the application, there are many that cannot be found. One such example is Pontefract castle.
After further searching, the only example of an application tailored to a specific castle I could find is detailed in the paper Recreating Sheffield’s Medieval Castle In Situ using Outdoor Augmented Reality (Leach, et al. 2018). In this paper, the technicalities behind creating an application that would re-build Sheffield’s castle in the original location are outlined and solutions to problems with creating such an application proposed. This paper does not however propose a design for such an application, nor did an application come to be created.
Leach, M. et al. (2018). Recreating Sheffield’s Medieval Castle In Situ using Outdoor Augmented Reality. EuroVR 2018: Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, LNIP,volume 11162, pp 213-229.
As I was unable to find an app serving the same purpose as the one I am designing, I believe it will be unique amongst the very limited application related to castles in England.
References:
Historic UK (2022) Castles in England [Webpage] Available online: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/CastlesinEngland/ [Accessed 04/12/2022]
Leach, M. et al. (2018). Recreating Sheffield’s Medieval Castle In Situ using Outdoor Augmented Reality. EuroVR 2018: Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, LNIP,volume 11162, pp 213-229.
The English Heritage Trust (2021) English Heritage Days Out [Application] Available online: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.englishheritage.app&gl=US [Accessed 04/12/2022]