User Experience and Spatial Presence in a Walk-In Augmented Reality 3D Model for Tourists

In the context of vulnerable tourist attractions, it is often the case that tourists cannot be allowed the enter all the premises of the attraction, which potentially has a negative impact on the visitors' experience. Virtual reality technologies are available for presenting the attraction for tourists in these cases, but the use of augmented reality (AR) also seems to have a role in certain use cases. The current paper presents our first experiment of using a walk-in augmented reality model to present an attraction to visitors near the original attraction. The tourist attraction visualized using AR was Mannerheim's Saloon Car dating back to WorldWar II. Nine participants used a tablet-based AR application to examine a realistically sized three-dimensional (3D) model of the saloon car in the close vicinity of the actual tourist attraction and filled in a questionnaire, which probed their user experience, spatial situation model, and spatial presence when using the system. These early results suggested that viewing a 3D model of the attraction using tablet-based AR provided a positive user experience for the participants and that the tablet-based AR implementation was successful in supporting the participants' formation of a spatial situation model of the saloon car. The participants also gave relatively high ratings for spatial presence while viewing the 3D model using tablet-based AR.