Augmented Reality and Heritage

Somehow the Heritage Jam run by the University of York has come round around again and gone. As I outlined in this post the Heritage Jam is an opportunity for people to get together and create new heritage visualisations relating to a specific theme. The theme this year was ‘Bones of Our Past’ – as I couldn’t be there in person, I decided to go ahead and put something together for the online competition.

It turns out my entry won first place! I built something that I have wanted to experiment with for a quite a while – an Augmented Reality application that allows you to take a real artefact (in this case a bone) and compare it to a virtual reference collection. By using your phone you can augment a ‘virtual lab’ onto your kitchen table and then use the app to call up a number of different bones from different animals until you can find one that matches.

The AR aspect of it adds something more to the ‘normal’ online virtual reference collections – by allowing you to augment the models in the correct scale in front of you and then twist and turn each one side by side.

In addition, as I am interested in multi-sensory things, I also added in the sounds and smells of the animals – as well as a virtual portal into a 360 degree video of a deer herd in action.

Finally, it has a link through to a set of Open Data from Open Context showing where else in the world similar types of bones have been found.

You can watch the visualisation here:

Please check out the full visualisation and explanation here: http://www.heritagejam.org/new-blog/2017/10/27/the-artefactkit-stu-eve

As with all of these ‘jam’ projects, the app is just a prototype and is quite messy in terms of overall look and feel – but I think it has potential to be quite useful. Now I just need some funding!

Gently I edged toward the beast. It had 4 long semi-transparent wings, the same length as its tube-like body. The body was iridescent in the light, changing colour through blue to green.  Its face was incredibly ugly… a mixture of large bug-like eyes on the side of its head and a gaping mouth filled with prehistoric fangs. It fluttered its wings gently in the breeze, as it cleaned itself by rubbing its long spindly white legs all over its body. I reached down quietly in readiness to capture it, brought my phone up to look through the camera feed. Just as I was about to swipe the screen it got alarmed, its wings became a blur of movement and it took off – flitting away out of sight. I attempted to chase it – but it was gone in a blink of an eye. Another two years would pass before my friend and I got another tip-off about the location of the quasi-mythical beast.

I could be talking about my hunt for the Yanma, the large dragonfly, famous for being able to see in all directions at once and having such extreme wing-speed that it can shatter glass. Except of course I am not talking about my hunt for a Pokémon – I am talking about the day I went out with a very good friend of mine hunting in the Fens for the white-legged damselfly. We didn’t manage to capture a picture of it that day, but we did briefly see it alight on a leaf, which was more than good enough.

White-legged Damselfly by Philipp Weigell (picture taken by Philipp Weigell) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

As someone who has done quite a bit of research on AR and heritage, I would like to wade into the discussion here and question a few things. To go someway toward mitigating the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man who doesn’t understand ‘kids today’ (too late!) –  I would like to point out that I have 3 boys of my own, play all sorts of different games on both smartphone and computer and I once even bought a girlfriend a pair of Pikachu pyjamas. I understand the nostalgic call of Pokémon, the excitement of the treasure hunt and the lure of the screen over the real world.

Pokémon Go as an AR revolution

First I would like to tackle the pedantic bit. Pokémon Go is not really an AR game. The AR element of it (overlaying the Pokémon onto your video feed) is (as someone else has already said) the most basic of AR possible. So much so that it can’t really be called AR at all. There is no interaction with or reading of the real surroundings, the Pokémon don’t hide behind the cooker or pop out from behind the Museum gates. You could be standing in your toilet or at the edge of the Grand Canyon and the Pokémon would still be badly superimposed, via a simple geo-location, onto the video feed. Even the Snapchat AR which superimposes silly things on people’s faces is more AR – as at least it is doing some kind of recognition of the real world (in that case facial recognition).

Calling Pokémon Go an AR revolution is doing a disservice to the potential and power of AR for integrating with the real world. AR has so much more potential than this. Pokémon Go is a locative game, not true AR.

Pokémon Go gets kids outdoors

What’s not to like about this? Even a cynical old git like me surely can’t complain about kids (and adults) getting away from their screens and going outside. Except, of course, they are not getting away from their screens. In fact it is probably worse – by taking the screen outside and searching for Pokémon through it they are not even really taking part in the outside world. The outside world is being entirely mediated through the screen – a small rectangular box guides your every movement. The alternate reality provided by the smartphone is so beguiling that there are people falling in canals, crashing into police cars and even plummeting off the edge of cliffs whilst playing the game. Clearly even though they are outside, they are oblivious to the world around them.

Do we really live in a world where kids can’t be bothered to get off the sofa and go outside without taking a screen or a game with them? What kind of world is this? What is it going to become if the next generation take this as normal? Why is it that hunting for a Squirtle is seen as the utmost of cool – but following a tip-off about the location of a Spoonbill or standing on the end of train platform hunting trains is seen as the ultimate in nerdiness?

I’m not sure I can really see the logic. I guess that Pokémon Go is the epitome of easy and quick satisfaction. Sure you may have to travel a little, to get to a place to capture the computer-generated critter – but when you arrive you don’t have to wait and watch and hope that you glimpse a sight of it. You don’t have to be silent and scan the sky with your binoculars and be PATIENT. If someone has said that the Charmander is there, it is pretty much guaranteed that if you go to those Lat Long coordinates you will find it. Bird-watching is not the same. You can go back to the same hide for days and days and perhaps not spot what you are looking for. It may even be there, but you might not have done quite enough research to differentiate the colour of the wing flash. It is not quick or easy, and because of that it is surely more ultimately satisfying.

Pokémon Go brings all the kids to the (Archaeological) Yard

This then brings me to the final point – Pokémon Go as a way to get people more engaged with heritage sites. We have seen this before, museums and heritage sites jumping on trendy locative game bandwagons to get more people to come to their sites (Andy Dufton and I wrote about this with Foursquare a few years ago). I think it may be a little early to say whether or not this is really going to be a big thing. We will need to see stats on the increases in ticket sales to show that the Pokéhunters are not just going to the museum car park. And if they are paying the ticket price and entering the site, how much are they actually engaging with the archaeology?

Charmanders in the BM

Terry Brock is also hopeful about this:

Terry Brock

As Andrew Reinhard’s archaeogaming foray shows, there is the potential for providing extra contextual information at the ‘cultural’ Pokéstops. However a quick look at his example of the Pokéstop at his local Washington memorial shows only the information that is on the plaque of the monument itself – but then you would have to look away from your screen to read that.

Route of Washington’s March monument (taken from the Archaeogaming blog by Andrew Reinhard) – https://archaeogaming.com/2016/07/09/pokemon-go-archaeogaming/

So let us stand back a little and think about what all this means. I’ve concentrated recently on creating ways for people to use Augmented Reality to engage with, explore and understand heritage sites (take a browse around my website to see some examples). The key for me is that by someone visiting the site physically they can engage both their body AND their mind simultaneously. The AR I use is exclusively made to facilitate this, to show hidden elements of the site, to waft unexpected smells to make you THINK about the space in different ways, to play sounds that have some kind of relevance to what happened in that location in the past.

A visit to an archaeological site by a Pokéhunter is the antithesis of this. When a Pokéhunter arrives at a site (drawn by the lure of a rich Pokéstop) they are in the classic state of Cartesian disconnect. Their body may be there, but their mind is far away, thinking of the next Pokéstop or the phone notification that just came through from their mate about a rare [insert rare Pokémon name here] up the road.

You only have to look at this tweet to see the effects of this:

https://twitter.com/ohmycrayon/status/751778120647180288

This girl is at STONEHENGE, for crying out loud. Instead of taking an interest in how the stones were put up, how they fit into the surrounding landscape, what actually happened in and around them, and, crucially, how the experience of actually being there makes her feel – she is chasing an Eevee. She herself admits her attention is “so divided right now”. If this is happening at one of Britain’s most iconic and engaging monuments – what does it mean for other heritage sites? This girl’s mind is clearly not in the same place as her body. She is engaged in two separate realities, linked only by coordinates on a Google Map. Using Pokémon Go to get bums on seats and through the ticket barriers might be good for sales, but at what cost? If it really takes a Squirtle to get our youth (and adults) to go to a heritage site, then we are doing something very wrong.

What about the Real World?

I’m sorry this post has been rather despairing. I am getting increasingly sad for the state of the world, where people go head over heels hunting virtual creatures, while the real incredible biodiversity is ignored, built over and marginalised. Instead of re-wilding the world with animals, insects, plants and birds we are enchanted by the opposite: introducing the computer and virtual creatures into our diminishing natural and cultural spaces. How can it be that I am in the minority for being bewitched by the hunt for the white-legged damselfly, a beautiful, crazy, prehistoric looking creature – while the vast majority of people are instead happy to jump in their cars, park in the car park of the local baptist church and stare into their phones flicking imaginary red balls at imaginary creatures?

I haven’t even touched on the inevitable monetisation of all this, how long will it be until the big museums have to pay Niantic loads of money to host an incredibly rare Pokéstop and the smaller sites (that are actually crying out for visitors) will be priced out of the Pokémarket?

If you really can’t get your kids (or yourself) out to a heritage site without gamifying it by chasing animals, why not go and find that pair of peregrine falcons roosting in the local church steeple? Or go newt-hunting in your local historic ponds? Perhaps try to spot a red kite above the prehistoric landscape of Dartmoor? You could even use this map of rare bird sightings around the country to plan a day out birding and visiting nearby heritage sites.

But please please please – leave your smartphone behind.

As an archaeologist, I’m used to reporting old news, and this is pretty old – however, might be of interest.

In 2014 and 2015 I participated in the University of York’s Heritage Jam. The Heritage Jam is a really excellent initiative, bringing together an eclectic group of archaeologists, gamers, makers and heritage specialists to hack together a project within two days of intense work, locked in a small room. For those not able to travel, there is also the option to participate online.

Heritage Jam Logo

As well as the final prototype each team is expected to produce a paradata document, that outlines the motivations behind the project and also expands a little on the method and technologies used. The intense session really pays dividends and being locked in a room focuses the mind to get a lot of things done – without the constant distractions of the real world.

In 2014, my team won first prize with our ‘Voices Recognition’ project which explored the auralisation of a cemetery in York, and in 2015 I was awarded Highly Commended for my individual entry, the Dead Man’s Nose, a device which I developed, built and use to deliver smells in-situ while investigating archaeological sites. I used it to explore the olfactory landscape of the Moesgaard Museum Archaeological Trail (Denmark) – a link to the video and paradata is here.

I have just submitted a guest blog post on the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) blog for their ongoing special series on Archaeology in the Digital Age. It’s an introduction to Augmented Reality for Archaeology and also includes some sneak peeks of the results of some of my own AR fieldwork on Bodmin Moor. The original post can be found at http://asorblog.org/?p=4707.

Recently I have been attempting to move closer to what I have coined embodied GIS (see this paper)- that is the ability to use and create conventional GIS software/data and then view it in the real world, in-situ and explore and move through that data and feedback those experiences. As is clear from the subject of this blog I am using Augmented Reality to achieve this aim, and therefore am using a combination of 3D modeling software (blender), gaming-engine software (Unity3D) and conventional GIS software (QGIS). Where possible I have been using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), to keep costs low – but also to support the community and to show that pretty much anything is possible with a FOSS solution.

One of the main hurdles to overcome when trying to combine these approaches is to figure out the workflow between the 2D/2.5D GIS software, the 3D gaming-engine environment and then finally overlaying all of that information onto the real world. There are many points during the process when data integrity can be lost, resolution of the original data can be affected and decisions on data-loss have to be made. I hope that this blog post (and the subsequent howtos on the next stages of the process) will enable people to identify those points and also to step people through the process so you can do it with your own data.

The first step toward embodied GIS is to move from the GIS software into the gaming engine. There are many ways to do this, but I have used QGIS, some command line GDAL tools and then blender. Over the next few posts I will show how you import elevation data, import/place archaeological information and then view the finished data via the web and also in the landscape itself.

This first post presumes you have at least a working knowledge of GIS software/data.

First you will need a Digital Elevation Model of your landscape. I am using Leskernick Hill on Bodmin Moor as my case study. I have the Ordnance Survey’s Landform PROFILE product which is interpolated from contours at 1:10,000 – resulting in a digital DTM with a horizontal resolution of 10m. To be honest this is not really a great resolution for close-up placement of data, but it works fine as a skeleton for the basic landscape form. The data comes from the OS as a 32bit TIFF file – the import process can’t deal with the floating-point nature of the 32bit TIFF and therefore we need to convert the TIFF to a 16-bit TIFF using the gdal tools. To install GDAL on my Mac I use the KyngChaos Mac OSX Frameworks. Binaries for other platforms are available here. Once you have GDAL installed, running the following command will convert the 32bit to a 16bit TIFF –

gdal_translate -ot UInt16 leskernick_DTM.tif  leskernick_DTM_16.tif

This is the first stage where we are losing resolution of the original data. The conversion from a floating point raster to an integer-based raster means our vertical resolution is being rounded to the nearest whole number – effectively limiting us to a 1m vertical resolution minimum. This is not too much of a problem with the PROFILE data as the vertical resolution is already being interpolated from contour lines of between 10m and 5m intervals – however, it can lead to artificial terracing which we will tackle a bit later. It is a bit more of a problem with higher-resolution data (such as LiDAR data) as you will be losing actual recorded data values – however with the PROFILE data we are just losing the already interpolated values from the contours.

Once the TIFF is converted then you will need to setup a local grid within your GIS software. Unity doesn’t handle large game areas that well – and will start the gamespace at 0,0 – therefore when we import our data it makes things much easier if we also can import our data relative to a 0,0 coordinate origin then to real-world coordinates. This is much easier than it sounds – and just involves using a false easting and northing for your data. In my case I made a simple shapefile of a 10k x 10k square that covered my study area the bottom left coordinates of the square (in the Ordnance Survey GB coordinate system (EPSG:27700)) were 212500, 75000. This means that the coordinates of any data I import into Unity will need to have 212500 subtracted from their eastings and 75000 subtracted from their northings. We can either do this programmatically or ‘in our heads’ when placing objects on the Unity landscape (more on this later in the howtos). It is an advantage having a relatively small study area and also having data in a planar/projected map projection – as the conversion will not need to take account of projections of earth curvature (as it would in a geographic projection such as LatLongs).

Therefore, you can choose to reproject/spatially adjust all of your data using the false eastings and northings within your GIS software – which makes the import a little easier. Or you can do it on an individual layer dataset basis as and when you import into Unity (which is what I do).

Once you have sorted out the GIS side of things, you will need to import the raster into blender – and build the 3D landscape mesh. I’ll try and explain this step-by-step but it is worth finding your way around blender a little bit first (I recommend these tutorials). Also, please bear in mind you may have slightly different window set-up to mine, but hopefully you will be able to find your way around. Please feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.

1. Open up blender – you should see the default cube view. Delete the cube, by selecting it in the panel to the right – then press ‘X’ and click delete
2. Now we want to make sure our units are set to metres – do this by clicking the little scene icon in the right-hand panel and then scrolling down to the Units drop-down and click the Metric button.

   Changing units to metric

3. Now add a plane – using Shift+A Add->Mesh->Plane (or use the Add menu). This will create a Plane of 2mx2m. We want this Plane to be the size of our DEM (in world units) so change the dimensions to be the same, in my case I set X to be ’10km’ and Y to be ’10km’. If you don’t have the dimensions panel on the right, click the ‘N’ key to make it appear.

   Setting the Plane Dimensions

4. You will notice that your plane has disappeared off into the distance. We need to adjust the clipping values of our viewport. Scroll down the panel with the Dimensions in it until you see the View dropdown. You will see a little section called ‘Clip:’ – change the End value from 1km to say 12km. Now if you zoom out (pinch to zoom out on a trackpad or use the mouse scroll wheel) you will see your Plane in all its very flat glory.
5. Before we start the interesting bit of giving it some elevation – we need to make sure it is in the right place. Remember that we are using false eastings and northings, so we want the bottom corner of our Plane to be at 0,0,0. To do this first set the 3D cursor to 0,0,0 (in the right-hand panel just beneath where you set the viewport clip values). Now click the ‘Origin’ button in the left-hand Object Tools panel, and click Origin to 3D cursor (the shortcut Shift+Ctrl+Alt+C)
6. You will also want to make sure the bottom left of the Plane is at 0,0,0. As the origin handle of the Plane is in the middle, for a 10x10km DEM you will need to move the X 5km and the X 5km, by changing the location values in the right-hand properties panel. That should ensure your bottom left corner is sitting nicely at 0,0,0.

   Setting the location

7. Our Plane currently only has 1 face – meaning we are not going to be able to give it much depth. So now we need to subdivide the Plane to give it more faces – think of this a bit like the resolution of a raster – the more faces the more detailed the model will be (at the cost of file size!). Enter Edit Mode (by pressing Tab). You will see the menu change in the Left Panel – and it will give you a set of Mesh Tools.
8. Click the Subdivide button – you can choose how much you want to subdivde but I usually make it to be around the same resolution as my DEM. So for a 10k square with 10m resolution we will want a subdivided plane with approx 1,000,000 faces. In Blender terms the closest we can get is 1,048576 faces. This is a BIG mesh – so I would suggest that you do one at high resolution like this – and then also have a lower resolution one for using as the terrain [see the terrain howto – when written!].

   Subdividing the Plane

9. We now want to finally give the Plane some Z dimension. This is done using the Displace Modifier. First come out of Edit mode – by pressing TAB. Now apply a material to the Plane, by pressing the Material button on the far right panel and hitting the [+New] button.

   The Material and Texture Buttons

10. Now add a texture to the new material by hitting the Texture button and again hitting the [New+] button. Scroll down the options and change the Type to ‘Image or Movie’. Scroll down further and change the Mapping coordinates from Generated to UV. Now click the Open icon on the panel and browse to the 16bit Tiff you made earlier. The image will be blank in the preview – but don’t worry blender can still read it.

    Applying the Image Texture

11. Once you have applied the texture – click the Object Modifiers button and choose the Displace Modifier from the Add Modifiers dropdown.

    Object Modifiers Button

12. When you have the Displace Modifier options up choose the texture you made by clicking the little cross-hatched box in the Texture section and choosing ‘Texture’ from the dropdown. First change the Midlevel value to be ‘0m’. Depending on your DEM size you may start seeing some changes in your Plane already. However, you will probably need to do some experimentation with the strength (the amount of displacement). For my DEM the strength I needed was 65000.203. This is a bit of weird number – but you can check the dimensions of the plane as you change the strength (see screenshot) you want the z value to be as close as possible to 255m (this basically means you will get the full range of the elevation values as the 16bit Tiff has 255 colour values. These should map to real-world heights on import into Unity. You may want to do some checking of this later when in Unity).

    Changing the Strength

13. Hopefully by this stage your landscape should have appeared on your Plane and you can spin and zoom it around as much as you like…
14. At this stage you are going to want to save your file! Unity can take a .blend file natively, but let’s export it as an FBX – so we can insert it into Unity (or any 3D modelling program of your choice). Go to File->Export->Autodesk FBX and save it somewhere convenient.

Well done for getting this far! The final steps in this HowTo are simply inserting the FBX into Unity. This is very easy, but I will be presuming you have a bit of knowledge of Unity.

1. Open Unity and start a new project. Import whichever packages you like, but I would suggest that you import at least the ones I have shown here – as they will be helpful in later HowTos.

   Creating a new Unity Project

2. Now simply drag your newly created FBX into Unity.  If you have a large mesh the import will probably take quite a long time – for large meshes (greater than 65535 vertices) you will also need the latest version of Unity (>3.5.2) which will auto split the large mesh into separate meshes for you. Otherwise you will have to pre-split it within blender.
3. Drag the newly imported FBX into your Editor View and you will see it appear – again you can zoom and pan around, etc. Before it is in the right place, however, you will need to make sure it it the correct size and orientation. First change the scale of the import from 0.01 to 1 – by adjusting the Mesh Scale Factor. Don’t forget to scroll down a little bit and click the apply button. After hitting apply you will likely have to wait a bit for Unity to make the adjustments.

   The FBX in Unity

4. Finally you will need to rotate the object once it is in your hierarchy on the y axis by 180 (this is because Blender and Unity have different ideas of whether Z is up or forward).

   Set the Y rotation

5. You should then have a 1:1 scale model of your DEM within Unity – the coordinates and heights should match your GIS coordinates (don’t forget to adjust for the false eastings and northings). In my case the centre of my DEM within real-world space is 217500, 80000. The adjustment for the false eastings and northings would be performed as follows:-

actual_coord - false_coord = unity_coord
therefore 217500 - 212500 = 5000 and 80000 - 75000 = 5000
therefore the Unity Coordinates of the centre of the area = 5000,5000

To double-check it would be worth adding an empty GameObject at a prominent location in the landscape (say the top of a hill) and then checking that the Unity coordinates match the real-world coordinates after adjustment for the false values.

I hope that helps a few people, there are a couple of other tutorials using different 3D modelling software on this topic so it is worth checking them out too here and here and one for Blender here.

In the next HowTo I’ll be looking at the various different ways of getting vector GIS data into Unity and adding in different 3D models for different GIS layers so stayed tuned!