# A Gamified Augmented Reality Application for Digital Heritage and Tourism
## Materials and Methods  
### The e-Tracer AR Application in a Nutcel  
The e-Tracer AR application is an educational and guide application for museums and galleries. It was designed to allow on-the-spot museum visitors to navigate themselves in the museum exhibitions using their own devices (mainly smartphones and tablets). Currently, the e-Tracer AR application has been optimized for the permanent collections of the Silversmithing museum ([[http://www.pipp.gr/en/diktuo-mouseiwn/Mouseio-Argyrotexnias/to-mouseio.aspx](http://www.pipp.gr/en/diktuo-mouseiwn/Mouseio-Argyrotexnias/to-mouseio.aspx)]([http://www.pipp.gr/en/diktuo-mouseiwn/Mouseio-Argyrotexnias/to-mouseio.aspx](http://www.pipp.gr/en/diktuo-mouseiwn/Mouseio-Argyrotexnias/to-mouseio.aspx))), located in the castle of Ioannina, Greece. The digital contents of the app were developed in compliance with the main objectives of the permanent museum collection, which is to preserve the technical knowledge of epitope silversmithing artists and to disseminate information about its tradition to the wider public. The AR functionality starts by sensing a museum artefact of interest, which is being seen through the mobile's built-in camera. The marker-based object detection mechanism triggers the projection of additional information (short description) related to this object (Figure 1), or it allows a virtual projection of animated 3D objects when available. There is an underlying multilingual support system, and currently, the information and educational content are provided to visitors in the English and Greek languages. Exhibitions in the Ioannina Silversmithing museum are mostly static and thus, in a hand-held AR setting, the object projection is expected to be performed in standard positions in the physical museum settings and in view of the visitor's distance to the object. Our solution has been technically tested for working at a distance up to 1.5 m from the artefact (Figure 2). Figure 1: Screenshot of the e-Tracer Augmented Reality (AR) user interface (user’s view). Figure 2: Physical setting of the augmented object projection (observer’s view). What was described up to now covers mostly the typical functionality expected from an AR application in museum settings. Considering similar applications, the use of QR codes appears to be the dominant way of delivering information about artefacts. For example, [PERSON] et al. [34] developed two ways: one using a visitor's smartphone and QR codes and a second one using a screen located next to the exhibits, but finally, they chose the first one after measuring the effect QR codes had on visitors. QR codes with image recognition are also being used as the main object identification method in commercial AR applications such as Layar ([[https://www.layar.com](https://www.layar.com)]([https://www.layar.com](https://www.layar.com))) and Gamar ([[https://www.gamar.com](https://www.gamar.com)]([https://www.gamar.com](https://www.gamar.com))). Thus, e-Tracer advocates the use of QR codes for indoor or outdoor use, but at the same time, it takes advantage of the aesthetically superior illustrations of artefacts, which can be equally strong at object detection. [PERSON] et al. [35] also used Unity to develop an indoors AR application and QR codes to integrate preprocessed 3D models, but they used a large display to make details of exhibits more accessible for visitors. In contrast, the e-Tracer AR app allows visitors to download the preprocessed 3D models on their mobile device and project the (animated) models in a dynamic zoom in/out mode. What e-Tracer has to offer more as added-value functionality is the interactive game-like self-evaluation questionnaire, which is based on the AR component. After visiting the museum exhibitions, museum visitors are asked to participate in a quiz about the new knowledge gained from the museum visit.