Augmented Reality Panoramas

To navigate, hover your arrow over a panorama, then click, hold and drag the mouse to the left, right, up or down. You can also zoom in or out using the mouse wheel. Hovering over a historic image will fade-in that image, and show its date.

These panoramas were sent to How to be a Retronaut by Arjan den Boer of ABC Media Weblab. Over to Arjan:

“Augmented Reality is a great way to see the past in the present. You can also use this approach with 360-degree panoramas.

“The first panorama (above) shows the (covered) courtyard of the 16th century Manenburg Castle, in Utrecht. The famous sculptor Pieter d’Hont used the courtyard as his studio from 1940 until his death in 1997. It is still used as artists’ studios today. The panorama shows historic images from the Utrecht Archives of Pieter d’Hont working in his studio at different times in his life .

“The second panorama (above) is of the cloisters in Utrecht cathedral. An oasis in the city where time seems to have stood still since the Middle Ages, this is not, in fact, the case. The Cloister’s Gothic arches showing scenes from the life of Saint Martin had weathered badly across the centuries, and in 1880 were restored by Pierre Cuypers. The historical photographs in this panorama, also from the Utrecht Archives, were made by EF Georges showing the scale of the restoration work. You may question whether the cloister as we know it is medieval or nineteenth-century.

“The final panorama (above) is of the Our Lady of the Assumption Elleboogkerk in Amersfoort. This neoclassical church was built in 1820 and remained a place of worship until the 1960s. In 1920, the church glazing was replaced with stained glass windows, but these were removed in 1971. Until 1998, it housed the Armando Museum. The church caught fire 2024 and has since become a ruin. Plans exist to rebuild, though it is unlikely that the museum would return.

In this panorama, I have restored the stained glass windows to their original positions using photographs from the Eemland Archive. It was a challenge to identify the position of each window. Check out the small round window at the top of the choir, which uniquely was still in place in 2024, and was lost in the fire”.

…..

Thank you very much to Arjan den Boer.

7 comments to Augmented Reality Panoramas

  • Jimmy A

    Extraordinary use of technology to create a series of “time-portals”. A foretaste of the Retroscope??

  • Bangner

    These are fantastic, Arjan! The mind boggles at the possibilities. Well done.

  • Nigel

    A great use of a technique similar to QTVR, which now seems to have faded from grace. This new version using overlays certainly offers a brilliant new ‘perspective’. Well done for all that hard work!

  • Richard

    Awesome. I was thinking just recently that as good as the “ghosts of…” pictures are they’d be even better if you could interactively swap between “then” and “now”. These go one step beyond that with the 360 degree panorama’s. Fantastic.

  • Gene

    Amazing. just amazing

  • lloyddabbler

    I could click back and forth for hours. Well done.

  • The Tech Gonzo Diary » links for 2024-12-14

    [...] Augmented Reality Panoramas « How to be a Retronaut I see with hourglass eyes (tags: augmentedreality atemporality) [...]

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