The Roman Baths is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the UK. The BBC supported by Aardman, will investigate how to deliver rich and engaging video-based experiences to users exploring an area of the Roman Baths. The project will focus on providing the ability to ‘see’ via a consumer mobile device (as VR or AR) a view of a place as it would have been in the past.

BBC will primarily target hand-held devices which can be used as visitors walk around. User experience challenges include assessing whether video-rich experiences can complement the visitor experience without being too challenging to view in the environment of a heritage site and ensuring that they add to (rather than detract from) the viewer’s understanding and enjoyment of the physical site.

The overall aim will be to learn generic lessons that can be applied in any situation where video-rich experiences could be used to enhance the visitor’s experience of a location. BBC are exploring the concept of ‘object-based media’ in which an audio-visual experience can be tailored for an individual user based on knowledge about their interests, location, device capabilities, previous media usage, etc. Location-based AR/VR is a specific use case of this.