Asturias Inmersivo | Augmented Reality and 360 platform for tourism in Asturias

Asturian heritage on a single map

We designed an interactive map, accessible from the web on mobile and desktop, that brings together the points of interest across the whole region: museums, mine shafts, historic towns, viewpoints and cheese dairies.

Some points were informative, with their own page, images and video in Spanish, English and French. Others added an augmented reality scene with an audio guide, activated in front of the real place, or a 360 tour to peek into it before going. Points were organized into themed routes, and a single point could belong to several. Users could explore by routes or by locations, with a search bar and category filters, and each route showed its duration and number of points.

Augmented reality: digital content that completes the real

Augmented reality never replaced the place; it completed it: it brought idle machinery back into operation, rebuilt what has disappeared and showed what cannot be seen. Each scene came with its audio guide in Spanish, English and French.

At Pozo San Luis, users saw the mine's lift working again. At the Castro de Coaña, the fortified Iron Age settlement as it might have been, over the ruins that survive today. And in Avilés, the town surrounded by the walls that have since disappeared.

From industrial heritage to history and nature

The augmented reality points covered a good part of the region's heritage: mine shafts and mining museums, coal ports, hydraulic power stations, former factories and historic towns.

In this way, the same visitor could go from seeing how a mine worked to discovering how the first Asturian settlers lived, each in its real location and with its own audio guide.

360 tours to bring the visit forward

360 tours bring the visit forward without replacing it, so as not to take away reasons to go in person. They let users peek into a place before going, from home or from any device.

Where they coincided with the official Asturias tourism website, they were integrated into it through iframes.

A CMS for the client to manage the content

Behind the platform, a CMS lets the client create points and routes and upload 3D models that are automatically converted into augmented reality scenes. This way, the client can keep expanding the content on their own.

A region-scale platform

The result was a platform that connects the history of Asturias, from prehistory to the industrial age, with more than 150 points of interest, around twenty themed routes and 55 augmented reality points, available in Spanish, English and French.

This platform is complemented by four touring virtual reality experiences, which we describe in this other project.