Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Heritage and cultural tourism, according to a 2010 Statistics Canada report, is the fastest growing sector in tourism, totaling over 8 billion dollars in receipts nationally in 2007. There is a huge demand from cultural and natural heritage sites, museums and theme parks for value-added attractions in the form of location-specific experience products that use information, communication and multimedia technologies. In response to the urgent call from the tourism sector, this project will conduct research and development of new methodology and techniques in mixed reality and apply them to virtual experience of historic and natural heritage sites. Specifically, we will focus on developing an intelligent rendering framework for 3D adaptive mixed reality applications on Canada's historic heritage sites, creating a new kind of immersive mixed reality motion picture experience: dramatic, interactive, cinematic scenes, embedded within and scaled to an existing location, are synchronously experienced by multiple users from various viewpoints onsite through mobile phones and tablet computers. Virtual characters, objects, buildings and landscapes are scaled and oriented such that as users move through a shared space, the perception of virtual elements mimics natural sight. The immersive quality of the experience may be enhanced by 3D sound delivered through headphones and speakers on site. The name given for this experience product is AWE (Augmented World Experience), an evocation of what it feels like to be dropped in the middle of great moments in history. A Letter of Intent has been entered into with the City of Toronto to demo a prototype experience at Fort York during its bicentennial commemoration of the War of 1812.