The 3D Explosion

In recent years, 3D image production has become much more accessible. Techniques like photogrammetry in which an object is photographed from many different angles so it can then be reproduced in 3D, used to require complex and costly equipment. Today, you can create a 3D model of an object or even an entire scene using nothing but your smartphone.

Similarly, the diffusion of 3D models took a giant leap forward with the arrival of the WebGL standard, which makes it possible to display 3D images in any web browser. This is where Sketchfab comes into play. In only four years’ time, the platform has become the leader in publishing and sharing 3D models, with close to a million models shared by its members.

Sketchfab and GuidiGO: a Natural Synergy

Though Sketchfab initially appealed to designers wishing to share their creations, their community has expanded over the years to include a variety of museums. Over 350 museums and cultural sites all over the world are now using Sketchfab, including the famous British Museum, and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels – who published no less than 355 models alone. Sketchfab now boasts a collection that would be the envy of a number of institutions the world over.

It soon became obvious that Sketchfab and GuidiGO, the leading storytelling platform with its 5,000 commented cultural sites and works, would be a perfect match. It is no surprise, then, that the 3D works on Sketchfab now interface with GuidiGO’s tour-creating tools.

GuidiGO now natively supports Sketchfab 3D embeds and lets you add 3D and VR illustrations to your stories.

Tremendous potential for GuidiGO users

This incredible functionality is available to anyone who creates a tour on GuidiGO. It is especially useful when accessing tours remotely, or when planning a visit. When it is impossible to make a trip to a cultural site in person, you can still enjoy the works on display and the cultural space itself.

For a few months now, the new GuidiGO web app has featured street views and 360° panoramas,” explains Corine Barbazanges, Head of Marketing at GuidiGO. “But 3D models open the way to even more possibilities. Our users are going to be able to create amazing tours based around a theme, rather than on the exploration of one specific site. They can even create their ideal collection by bringing together works from different museums with absolutely no geographic constraints.

This is the idea behind the 3D Imaginary Tour created by GuidiGO as a demo. In this tour, you will hear the story of the Nefertiti bust and the Roman Colosseum. As you listen, you can look at every detail and rotate the objects to see them from multiple angles. You can also learn about Protoceratops, a dinosaur that you can spin around in 3D as it walks across your screen.

Now, museums can offer virtual tours to anyone unable to visit in person—particularly schools with limited means. A teacher could also create a tour based on a thematic selection of works and then use it as part of their curriculum—they could even invite students to create their own tours as a class project. Art lovers might also create a gallery of their favorite works and enrich them with personal commentary.

Of course, a virtual tour can never replace an on-site visit. As GuidiGO CEO David Lerman is well aware:

There is nothing like the feeling you get from real contact with a work or space. But the fact is, no one has the means to visit every museum in the world. That’s why art books and documentaries exist. So why not have virtual tours as well? Augmented with Sketchfab resources, the GuidiGO web app makes it possible to view works in 3D and in great detail; it also enriches the experience with audio commentary and visual references. In my opinion, this is one of the best remote visitor experiences ever created so far.

The experience is sure to appeal to museums and culture lovers; especially since opening an account is free on both Sketchfab and GuidiGO.

What are you waiting for?

Would you like to create a tour of ancient Egyptian artifacts, animal sculptures throughout the ages, or the collections at the British Museum? It couldn’t be more simple.

Start by creating your tour in GuidiGO Studio. Decide which stops you want to add, then enrich them with text, audio and video content. If you’d like to add 3D content to a stop in your tour, simply copy the URL of the model from Sketchfab then paste it in your stop, in GuidiGO Studio:

Finally, publish your tour in just one click. A few minutes later, it will be accessible from any web browser.

Note: Sketchfab 3D models are not yet available in the GuidiGO mobile apps.

Let’s begin with the ones we expect to make the biggest impact this year:

1. Immersive Technologies

As demand for a more and more realistic visitor experience increases, we’ve seen immersive technologies explode: virtual reality (read our article on VR here), augmented reality, mixed reality, 3D sound, and the list goes on…

Google Cardboard, Project Tango and others, like Microsoft Hololens, promise to make 2016 one of the most innovative years yet. Far from simply being gadgets, these technologies foster an ever more impressive user experience, taking storytelling to a whole new level.

2. Indoor Positioning Systems

In 2015, we saw an influx of iBeacon and Bluetooth Low Energy devices of all kinds. Initially, these technologies promised to revolutionize indoor positioning, with contextualized content, long battery life, limited maintenance, and ease of use… all at a relatively low cost.

As many sites today can now tell you, in practice, the experience is more complicated than anticipated. Installing beacons isn’t just a matter of taking them out of the box and distributing them around the site. They have to be set up with specific software and services if you really want to get the most out of their features, which has left many people feeling rather disappointed. To date, the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of a beacon is typically higher than originally expected.

Even so, beacon technology continues to expand; which is how the Eddystone standard recently came to be. With the market as competitive as it is, we can expect to see a lot more innovation in this area, which will lead to more complete offerings and better performance.

Aside from beacons, other indoor positioning technologies requiring less infrastructure are likely to develop. Experimentation is currently underway. We’ll be sure to tell you more soon ;-)

3. Collaborative Storytelling

A trend toward collaborative activities at heritage sites has already started to appear and we expect the trend to grow even more in the future. Collaborative storytelling invites passionate individuals involved with museums and heritage sites to come together and create a story together, whether they are teachers, students, experts, tour guides, docents or visitors. This approach allows access to multiple points of view, making it possible to reach all types of visitors.

Here at GuidiGO, we piloted a similar project ourselves last year (entitled “Viewing Angles”) bringing together no less than 17 cultural sites and over 400 students and educators.

4. Digital Content

There’s nothing new about content digitalization. What is new, however, is that digital content is becoming more and more open access, which is another contributing factor to the increase in storytelling and collaboration. The possibility of sharing makes it more appealing to digitize content, so we expect to see a virtuous cycle develop where users are producing and sharing more of their own content.

As more content becomes accessible, new uses for it are likely to emerge, whether you’re preparing for your visit in advance, or wanting to relive the highlights of your visit after the fact. Take Coopers Hewitt and MOMA, for example. Those who are unable to visit sites in person will be able to take part in immersive experiences remotely; virtual reality will allow students to visit museums on the other side of the world, and Twitterbots will make the museum experience ubiquitous.

The quantity of information available to us will continue to increase at an exponential rate, thanks to the democratization and diversification of the tools we now have at our fingertips: 3D scanners, 360° cameras and videos, aerial images taken from drones, and more.

5. From Wearables Technology to Connected Devices

Born in 2014, the wearable market took a break in 2015 – at least in our field. Today, Google and its subsidiary, Nest, seem to be exploring new uses for Google Glass, though they have not yet announced an official release date.

GuidiGO has been a “Glass at work” partner from the beginning. We were impressed by the impact this technology could have on cultural interpretation. During our experiments – at the Keith Haring exhibit at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, then at Velazquez and Picasso.mania at the Grand Palais in Paris – thousands of users shared our enthusiasm and told us they’d love to relive the experience at future exhibits.

Nevertheless, the break Google has taken with Glass shows their desire to improve on the technology before making it accessible to the wider public.

Today, smart watches are all the rage – they sprouted up like mushrooms under our Christmas trees this year. Smart watches are certainly great for very specific uses like real time notifications, performance tracking, and collecting health data. But in our field, these tools have not yet found their utility, as they aren’t yet capable of providing a compelling visitor experience in and of themselves.

However, wearable technology isn’t limited to watches and glasses. As confirmed at the latest CES, wearable technology will soon be everywhere, and sensors could soon make different levels of interactivity possible for visitors.

★ What’s next?…

Let’s leave 2016 behind for a moment and look even further… we can already count on two more trends:

Smart Personalization

When Big Data and Artificial Intelligence come together, museums and heritage sites will be able to offer uniquely personalized guided visits. The visit will be tailor-made based on the individual’s profile (his or her tastes, visit history, activity on social media, etc.) and on data sent from sensors placed throughout the site to capture position, popular areas, temperature, sound levels, and more.

It will then be possible to orient an art lover toward works most likely to interest him or her, right at the moment when conditions would be most pleasant; or to invite parents to explore a city as a family, using a treasure hunt that’s been adapted to the age of their children.

Pervasive and Invisible Apps

Today we talk about apps that are compatible with iOS and Android. Tomorrow, we’ll probably talk about apps being compatible with Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, Google Maps, and the list goes on. In the near future, mono usage and daily usage apps seem destined to fuse into one. Many interfaces are likely to move toward a card system which aggregates content from multiple sources in one place. A few attempts at this have already made an appearance, such as the Discover feature on Snapchat, or Uber on Messenger.

So there you have it. It’s time for our little journey into the future to come to an end. We’ll meet you back here in a few months to see how well our predictions hold up!

Since 2013, however, significant advances have been made. Innovators such as Oculus, and more recently Google, with “Cardboard”, are about to make virtual reality a household name—and this time for good, or so it seems.

There’s a simple explanation for this: virtual reality technology is now more accessible because prices have literally plummeted. With the arrival of Google Cardboard, a cardboard box that costs less than $10 is all it takes to transform any smartphone into a virtual reality device. And if you’re feeling especially luxurious, you can purchase a plastic version for only $60 :)

Accessible technologies will completely transform the way Virtual Reality is used

Simple, but no less remarkable, the little magic box was born in Google’s Paris offices, thanks to two engineers: David Coz and Damien Henry. Inspired by the Durovis Dive headset, the box took center stage in June 2014 at Google’s annual I/O developers conference. Since then, Google Cardboard apps crossed 15 million downloads. Last month, the New York Times sent a million Cardboards to its subscribers, giving them access to exclusive content. This is just the beginning of the trend, and it promises to be phenomenal.

We are entering an era in which not only visualization technologies like Cardboard will become prolific, but we will also see an increase in software and hardware like Jump, Giroptic or even the Cardboard Camera application, which simplify the creation of VR enabled content. Such technologies will completely transform the way virtual reality is used, much like smartphones revolutionized the way we use photo and video.

A fantastic tool for teleporting a visitor… during his or her visit!

Here at GuidiGO, we’ve been looking into these technologies for over a year. The idea was to explore different uses for virtual reality that would enrich the experience of visiting museums and historical sites in addition to existing interpretive content. We hosted several “hackathons” on site to test new concepts and create prototypes for new interfaces. After a few surprises, and lots of fun (it takes a bit of time for the brain to adjust to sensations it’s not used to!) several fascinating possibilities emerged. In the end, we all reached the same conclusion: virtual reality would be a fantastic tool for teleporting a visitor… during his or her visit! “What’s the point of teleporting a visitor?” you might ask, “Why not let the visitor simply enjoy whatever is on display, in real life, with his or her own eyes?” We believe both experiences are fully compatible. Imagine the following scenarios for just a moment (some of which are already available):

• You are in a gallery at a Natural History museum, looking at the skeleton of a Triceratops. Suddenly, the animal comes to life, transporting you to the Cretaceous period. And there to your right, look out! Behind you, even above your head…enormous dinosaurs are moving all around you. You suddenly feel very small.

• You are visiting a museum on the history of aviation. How would you like to take the control wheel of Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis in your hands? You’re surrounded by the cockpit, the pilot seat, the control panel, and all of the instruments—just as if you were really there. In front of you, the sky and clouds fly by.

• You are visiting a World War I battle site, and there you are in the muddy trenches, listening to the sounds of war, as soldiers move about, telling you about their daily experiences and fears.

• You are visiting the Empire State Building. How would you like to experience the atmosphere of the construction site when this legendary skyscraper was being built? Around you, men are working on the beams, while 1930s New York spreads out below your feet. We hope you’re not afraid of heights!

These are only a few examples, of course. Each site will be free to come up with whatever is most likely to make their visitor experience particularly memorable: explore the temple where an ancient statue was originally located; visit the reconstruction of a site that no longer exists (Pompeii, the Bastille prison, etc.); discover a place closed off to the public (the Lascaux caves, the Oval Office, etc.)

Virtual Reality takes the visitor to the heart of an immersive sensory experience

Art museums will be no exception. Virtual reality is also capable of teleporting you into Renoir’s studio, or into Monet’s gardens at Giverny. You’ll be able to observe artists as they work, or hear them tell you about their masterpieces. You may also soon be able to experience artwork made up of both real and virtual components – or even be transported straight into a painting or the visual universe of its creator (e.g., Van Gogh’s universe)… because admit it, we’re not the only ones who have thought about passing through the canvas! Soon you’ll be able to explore a work from the inside, and brush shoulders with its characters. Here’s your chance to attend, along with all the glamorous spectators, the coronation of Napoleon or the Marriage at Cana :)

Another fun and educational use for virtual reality is to let the visitor “walk” through a life sized timeline in order to situate a work in its historical and artistic context.

There’s a strong chance this new paradigm will be an important influence on the scenography of museums. It’s easy to imagine a few virtual reality headsets taking the place of more cumbersome installations. The headsets could even be connected to one another to allow a group to simultaneously share the same experience.

Virtual reality is still evolving, but one thing is sure: the possibilities are infinite. Not only does it allow us to travel in time and space, but it also opens up imaginary dimensions that would be inaccessible without it, like the most intimate aspects of a work of art. Virtual reality takes the visitor to the heart of an immersive sensory experience that is extremely stimulating to the imagination and memory, allowing you to form a deep connection with the place you are visiting.

On the same subject: “Virtual Reality has arrived at GuidiGO!”