To help you diversify your games, GuidiGO Studio offers 9 types of challenges as standard features:

• Open question
• Multiple Choice with texts
• Multiple Choice with images
• Fill-in-the-blanks (with or without clues)
• Photo challenge
• Photo challenge with an Augmented Reality object
• Magic Scanner
• Solving a mystery word / a mystery code
• Solving a jigsaw puzzle

Do you want even more variety? Here are some possibilities!

First, consider using the “audio” field of the challenge. This way, you can invite the player to identify animal cries, tool noises, musical instrument sounds, etc.

You can also use standard challenges to create other types of games. Here are a few different ways to use them.

1. Matching game

Possible uses:

• Match each image with the correct statement
• Match works of art or characters with the correct era, artistic movement, etc.

2. Sorting game

Possible uses:

• Place events in chronological order
• Sort animals by speed or weight, sort monuments by height, length of construction, etc.

3. Completing an image

Possible use:

• Look at a work of art and put the missing details back in place.

4. Spotting the hidden detail

Possible use:

• Look at a work of art or a scene and spot a detail in it.

5. Finding the missing object

Possible use:

• Look closely at a work or scene to identify the missing detail.

6. Solving a rebus

Possible use:

• Involve younger children, especially those who are not yet proficient in reading.

To learn how to create each of these challenges, go to our online help center where you can access the files we used to create the examples above.

Interested? Try out all the GuidiGO features with a free 30-day trial.

We have come a long way since the first version of GuidiGO in 2012! And so many kilometers walked by visitors! To keep them walking and to make it even more enjoyable, we have made the app more user-friendly and improved the user experience, taking into account customer and visitor feedback from over the years.

GuidiGO V3 is the synthesis of your most frequent requests:

• Modern interface that adapts to each device, regardless of screen size or resolution
• The same interface, whether you are using iOS or Android
• Instant and more fluid access to tours and treasure hunts: 
  • Free access, without having to log in
  • Immediate launch, without having to download
• 1-tap access to each type of content: audio / video / text & photo gallery / 3D panoramas / challenges
• Optimized offline use, with highly accurate vector maps for outdoor tours
• Improved gameplay experience, with resizable challenge images
• Improved experience for “logbook” type tours (narrative centered around the written word, without audio or video)

And as always:

• Games and treasure hunts for family experiences
• Customized multi-level maps for indoor tours
• 360° panoramas for immersive experiences that can be used with or without a VR headset

On the technical side, GuidiGO v3 has been entirely re-coded in React Native, one of the most popular languages for mobile devices today. Concretely, this means that it will be easier for us to offer you new features on a regular basis. And maybe even some surprises by the end of this year…

Until then, we’ll let you enjoy GuidiGO v3, and we can’t wait to hear what you think about it!

Install GuidiGO from the App Store or from Google Play.

Note: We recommend that you delete any previous versions of the GuidiGO app before installing this update.

Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels

When museums think about remote immersive experiences, Virtual Reality (VR) is usually the first technology that comes to mind. While we have created VR experiences in the past – such as an entire exhibition for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History – VR did not seem to be the best fit in this instance. The education team’s brief included the following stipulations:

• Immersive life-size experience
• No application to download
• Usable instantly by anyone on any mobile device
• Compatible with computers and tablets
• Photorealistic rendering

Three years ago we would have replied: “Sorry, this is not possible.” But Mobile AR has changed the game and is now able to tick all these boxes.

When iOS and Android adopted .USDZ and .GLB formats in 2018, it became possible for more than one billion devices to display an AR experience directly inside a mobile browser.

• .GLB is a 3D file format that describes an object according to its surface, with meshes, materials and textures. .GLB is the bundled version of the .GLTF format which was established by the Khronos Group, and is supported by Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Adobe.
• .USDZ is another 3D file format developed by Pixar and Apple. It’s the only AR file format compatible with Apple devices.

Let’s put it this way, .USDZ and .GLB files are to AR what .PDF files are to documents. They display 3D objects, in AR in your mobile browser (Chrome or Safari), in 3D in your computer browser (similar to Sketchfab).

If you would like to see for yourself what mobile AR looks like, try the following:

• On your mobile device, google one of these words: Tiger, Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong, Chauvet cave, or Tyrannosaurus.
• Tap the “view in 3D” icon, next to the relevant thumbnail.

More AR search examples are available here.

10 exhibits in 3 weeks to be AR ready

The NHMU Education Department requested this AR functionality for the beginning of the school year. Museum staff had already scanned their exhibits in photogrammetry, including a selection of paleontological items, bird skulls, and artifacts of Native American culture.

The GuidiGO AR team used GuidiGO Studio and AR Composer platform to quickly optimize the mesh and textures for Android and iOS devices and make sure the quality of the 3D models was consistent especially in low light environments.

We are thrilled with the result. Check it out for yourself by displaying the baby mammoth skeleton in your room! We are even more excited to hear about the impact of our work after receiving this kind note from Tracey Collins, Interim Director of Education at NHMU:

NHMU was thrilled to partner with GuidiGO to deliver such innovative science education and immersive learning experiences to 25,000 students in Utah this school year. We have received great feedback so far and are looking for new ways, Museum-wide, to incorporate AR functionality into all of our virtual opportunities.

To learn more about GuidiGO AR, visit www.guidigo.com/AR

Other example by GuidiGO – Tap on the image below on your mobile to discover this famous masterpiece in AR, in real size:

To empower authors to have their tours optimized for a remote experience, we have added some new features. It’s now easier to select a street view or 360° panorama, and to choose the desired landing view. In addition, fly-over mode now offers detailed 3D aerial views of most cities.

Whether you want to go on a Zoom tour with friends and family, a field trip with your students, or you just wish to wander around the globe, you will find many exciting destinations on GuidiGO. We’ve selected a few of them in the Top 10 list below.

We hope you enjoy them as much as we do. Happy Summer to all!

• in Paris
  • Impressionist walk through Montmartre
  • Wacky walk in Montmartre
  • Ile de la Cité and the History of Paris
• In Istanbul
  Hagia Sophia Guided Tour
• In Scotland
  Glasgow’s Landmarks tour
• In New-York City
  Bryant Park
• In Dublin
  What’s Dublin made of? Streets, stories & fossils!
• In San Francisco
  HARVEY MILK – “Out of the bars, into the streets!”
• In Mountain View
  Computer History Museum: Revolution Tour
• In Princeton
  Stories of African American Life at Princeton
• In London
  London Soho with Author Irma Kurtz

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

This AR experience is part of “Launchpad: Apollo 11 Promises Kept“, a new 10,000 sq. ft. exhibition paying tribute to the past, present and future of space exploration. The exhibition combines the Museum’s significant collection of Apollo-era artifacts with cutting-edge interactive experiences to create an immersive and exciting cosmic journey.

Photo by Fort Worth Museum of Science and History

What is unique about AR Composer is that digital objects keep their original positions, creating persistent AR experiences shareable across several devices.

To position digital artefacts accurately, AR Composer comes with an easy-to-use 6-DOF (Degrees Of Freedom) Editor. 3D objects can be moved from left to right, up and down, forwards and backwards, including three rotation options. With this unique feature, objects can be placed accurately in any space, in no time.

Discover how to try AR Composer at the end of this post.

AR Composer also comes with 2 modes: Creator and Visitor mode. In Creator mode, the museum team can create as many persistent scenes as they want, placing and anchoring their objects wherever they like in the physical space. When this process is finished, the museum simply has to lock the scenes in Visitor mode to make them available on any device running AR Composer. Visitors can then use the devices provided by the venue or their personal device to enjoy the content.

Another perk of AR Composer is that there is no limit to the number of 3D assets that can be uploaded, which gives digital and education teams at museums the opportunity to design scenes with the creativity of a theatrical production. Objects can be animated, interactive and can display data to showcase digital storytelling or contextual information.

There are a number of creative ways to use the app. Examples include:

• Sharing works that are missing from a collection, whether they are in another museum, being restored, or on loan.
• Rebuilding archeological monuments – for example, making an entire temple appear where only an ancient column remains.
• Comparing works to previous versions, or to the artist’s preliminary sketches.
• Taking complex mechanisms apart and then putting them back together to see how they work. Examples include machines, the human body, the solar system, etc.
• Making digital characters move around in front of the visitor.
• Recreating the decor and atmosphere of an entire room in real size, by superimposing its former or future state on top of its current reality.
• Adding flesh and skin to the skeletons of extinct species, e.g. dinosaurs.
• Creating digital collaborative artwork.
• Creating a portal to access a virtual world.
• Creating a digital character guide to provide specialized tours for children, teens or other visitor groups.

AR Composer saves museums from having to build their own customized application and CMS (Content Management System) from scratch. That way, the majority of the budget can be allocated to creating content and designing compelling visitor experiences.

Try AR Composer now! We are offering AR Composer to museums and heritage sites in private Beta, with several demo assets included. If you are interested, please contact us.

Lumin content was created by the DIA’s interpretive team leveraging GuidiGO’s augmented reality platform, AR Composer, built specifically for Tango. A pilot of the device took place January –April 2017. During the pilot evaluators conducted user testing and observations. Below are some of the results.

Visitor responses are taken from Lumin Short Survey Card (n=442) and Lumin Online Survey (n=110).

GuidiGO was presented with the Gold MUSE Award in the category Games and Virtual/Augmented Reality during a champagne reception on Sunday, May 7, 2017, at the 2017 American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.

This award recognizes GuidiGO’s high achievement in the application of media and technology to Gallery, Library, Archive, and Museum (GLAM) programs.

Lumin content was created by the DIA’s interpretive team leveraging GuidiGO’s augmented reality platform, AR Composer, built specifically for Tango. This allows the user to interact with real size 3-D animations, information and display directions in the visitor’s field of view. (Learn more about Lumin.)

The MUSE Awards competition received more than 200 applications from a wide variety of institutions in North and South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. This year’s entries included videos and films, interactive kiosks and installations, VR experiences, applications and APIs, digital communities, websites, audio tours, and more.

Over 90 GLAM professionals from across the globe participated as jurors in the process of reviewing and scoring entries. Winning programs were expected to demonstrate outstanding achievement in their content, interface, design, technical merit, innovation, utility, and appeal.

Now in its 28th year, the MUSE awards competition recognizes outstanding achievement in GLAM media and technology efforts. The competition is administrated by the American Alliance of Museums Media & Technology Professional Network.

For more information about the MUSE awards, please visit this page.

Singapore’s oldest museum now allows its visitors to experience the building through an enhanced architectural tour. It tells the story of the building’s long history and its transformation from a Natural History Museum to the most significant historical museum of Singapore.

Visitors are given a Tango-compatible Lenovo Phab 2 Pro device, which will transport them back in time and enable them to see the architectural evolution of the building, how it looked like over a century ago and onwards, and the artefacts that used to be displayed in it. The digital tour, led by volunteer guides, evokes the museum’s imagery in a way that helps visitors obtain deeper understanding of its contents.

There are currently six tour stops that incorporate a range of AR experiences, such as:

The Building’s Evolution

The evolution of a 130-year-old building is bound to be an interesting one. Combining Tango technology’s ability to both augment and recreate reality, visitors are able to see the replica of the museum’s transformation throughout the decades.

The Museum’s Rotunda

The old rotunda used to display a natural history collection, as well as a marble bust of Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. Through the lens of their device, visitors can walk around a life-size model of the room, surrounded with the original artefacts that once graced it, and see the clay tiles instead of the current marble flooring.

The Indian Fin Whale

This iconic 42-feet-long skeleton used to be displayed in the museum in the early 1900s, until it was returned to Malaysia in the 1970s. Thanks to Tango technology, visitors can once again see its fossil under the glass passage on the second floor, where it once stood. However, that’s not all – they can also witness the reimagining of how it looked and sounded like while it was still alive.

Lumin content was created by the DIA’s interpretive team leveraging GuidiGO’s new augmented reality platform, AR Composer, built specifically for Tango. This allows the user to interact with real size 3D animations, information and display directions in the visitor’s field of view.

Lumin connects visitors with artworks in a global context beyond the DIA,” said Salvador Salort-Pons, DIA director. “Augmented reality allows the user to see the unseen, imagine art in its original setting and understand how objects were used and experienced in people’s everyday lives. It is an exciting way to incorporate the latest technology into the visitor experience.

Visitors will hold a Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, the first Tango enabled phone, to explore different works of art. The initial phase of the project includes seven tour stops with a variety of AR experiences, including:

A Mummy, from Ancient Egypt

Mummies give us insights into ancient burial rituals. With the app’s AR overlay, you can peer beneath the sarcophagus and even the mummies’ bandages to explore an X-ray-like view of the skeleton.

The Ishtar Gate, from Ancient Babylonia

The Ishtar Gate once stood six stories high. Now, with the power of Tango’s motion tracking technology, you can explore the gate at scale, walk under its arch, and see where the Detroit Institute of Art’s 3×4-foot mosaic piece fits into this architectural wonder.

A limestone Relief, from Mesopotamia

The limestone relief was originally painted with vibrant colors, which have long since faded. By looking through your Tango enable device, you can tap on the relief to see what it would have looked like when it was first created thousands of years ago.

A Cylinder Seal, from Mesopotamia

Small round cylinder seals were once used to make impressions on clay for items like jewelry and signatures for administrative purposes. Now, instead of just seeing the seals in a case, you can roll the seals in AR to see the written characters and figurative scenes that they create.

WANT TO SEE LUMIN IN ACTION? CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEOS.

This is just the beginning of how you’ll be able to use Tango in museums to see more, hear more and learn more – in other words, to experience museums around the world in a whole new way.

“Lumin” in the Press:

• Hyperallergic: More Screens, More Knowledge: Testing the Detroit Institute of Arts’ New Augmented Reality App >>
• Fortune: Google Wants To Give Museum Visitors A Pokémon Go-Like Experience >>
• Venture Beat: Google opens Tango augmented reality platform to museums, starting with Detroit Institute of Arts >>
• The News Herald: Augmented reality adds dimension to art at DIA >>
• The Economist: Futurism: museums and technology >>
• Geek: Detroit Institute of Arts Enriches Museum Experience with Google Tango >>
• Tom’s Hardware: Google’s Project Tango Heads To The Detroit Institute Of Arts >>
• CNET: Google’s project Tango AR lets museum visitors delve deeper >>
• Tech Crunch: A Detroit art museum is leveraging Google Tango for an AR history lesson >>