ViewAR

Inspiration

Kathmandu, the city of temples, boasts more than 3,000 temples, many of which are on the verge of extinction. The local culture and heritage are gradually fading, as the interest among the community members wanes. With Nepal's focus on promoting tourism, there remains a significant gap in providing tourists with a localized and immersive cultural experience.

How We Built It

Our concept aimed to make cultural conservation engaging by gamifying the city exploration experience. We utilized the Unity game engine to develop the application, incorporating Vuforia as our primary technology for extended reality (XR). The technical stack also included Vuforia Web Services, MongoDB, and FastAPI to bring our vision to life.

Challenges

The hackathon presented numerous challenges, especially given that augmented reality (AR) is a relatively unexplored domain with limited community support. Debugging was particularly difficult due to the reliance on documentation for numerous wrappers. The most significant issue was the instability of the Vuforia framework, which led to several glitches and functional discrepancies in the application.

Accomplishments

Despite the challenges and limited resources, we surpassed our initial expectations. Our final product is a Unity application featuring:

Virtual map navigation
Live AR avatars based on geolocation
3D models of World Heritage sites
Animated characters that guide users within the site through text and voice
Transcription and cultural annotation of historical inscriptions ("silalekh"), including their cultural significance and historical meanings

What We Learned

This hackathon was particularly enriching as we ventured into the relatively unexplored fields of XR (AR + VR). We honed our skills in navigating new technologies with minimal external resources beyond documentation. It was also an enjoyable experience learning about AR and working with the Unity game engine.

Future

ViewAR has the potential for a promising future, filling the gap for a local tool that enhances city exploration through technology. Our immediate goal is to implement the application in Panauti Municipality, with plans to expand to larger cities such as Kathmandu, Lalitpur, and Bhaktapur. We draw inspiration from apps like Google Maps and Pokémon GO and aim to integrate similar features for future updates.