Great scott! Augmented reality is taking tourists and thrusting them back in time to experience the sights (and sometimes sounds) of the ancient world. Using a camera and video screen, AR blends live and digital images in real time, giving you the sense that artificial objects are appearing in the physical world. In China, France, Switzerland, Germany, and many other locations, reconstructed images of past landmarks are being displayed overlapping with the current appearance giving tourists the sense of traveling back in time. We’ve got a bunch of videos for you after the break, so check them all out.

We’ve seen augmented reality used in a variety of applications, from futuristic baseball cards to taking a tour of the starship Enterprise. Many of these uses have centered on entertainment, but some have started to focus on providing helpful information to answer questions. Where can I find a restaurant? What will this car look like in red? How big is this toy when assembled? Historically accurate depictions of the past for tourists falls somewhere in between the two. It makes me wonder if AR is still trying to find a ’sweet spot’ in the world, some field of application (gaming, map augmenting, marketing, etc) where it really excels, or if augmented reality tourism is a sign that AR is set to invade every conceivable field it can.
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