Experience Innsbruck sights with VR

From April, visitors will be able to marvel at historical images of Innsbruck sights such as St Anne's Column and the Hofburg. Virtual reality glasses allow visitors to take a look back into the past during city tours.

A Tyrolean start-up company has developed an app that allows tourist guides to offer their guests a 360-degree view of earlier times. This requires the free app "TimeTour" and a smartphone. Guides use a QR code to unlock the city's sights. The view through the virtual reality glasses opens up a panoramic view of Innsbruck at the turn of the century.

Of course you don't walk through the city with glasses in front of your eyes, says tour guide Alexandra Mairhofer. That would be far too dangerous. But at sights such as the Hofburg or St Anne's Column, you can show a glimpse into the past.

Attractive for young guests

The new technology is particularly appealing to a young audience. Young people hung on the lips of the city guide during trial tours, the boring museum character totally disappears, emphasises Mairhofer.

The idea for the virtual journey into the past was born during a city trip to Bologna. Gordon Grusdat, the founder of TimeTour, would have liked to see authentic views of the stories told by the Italian tour guides.

A lot of research, a lot of programming

Back in Tyrol, he took his idea further and finally realised it together with a team of technicians and programmers. Many hours of programming and research work in the city archives later, you can now take a look back at Innsbruck in the past. But TimeTour doesn't just travel back in time. The Triumphpforte looks futuristic through the 3D glasses.

In order to construct the 3D images as authentically as possible, dozens of engravings and old paintings were compared. This was difficult because many artists often omitted windows or columns at will, says Grusdat. It took the technicians around six months of tinkering to depict a viewpoint of Innsbruck in a historically accurate way.

The modern city tour should be affordable for everyone, says Grusdat. All you need is the app and a tour guide who offers the virtual reality tours. A 100-minute city tour currently costs around 19 euros, which Grusdat says will remain the same with the new technical support.

The virtual reality glasses serve as a marketing tool and are designed to make city tours more appealing.

Source: tirol.orf.at / timetour