dinosaurs may have been extinct for more than 65 million years, but a Canadian museum uses a new application to restore life.
With the Ultimate ROM application called Dinosaurs, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, uses augmented reality, virtual vision of the real world which can be extended with graphics or other content.
When visitors point their smartphones to indicators throughout the museum, dinosaurs come to life on the application. IPads displayed in the museum and aimed to show the skeletons of creatures with more realism, with meat.
"We can see how they would look with skin when they were alive and how they have moved and behaved," said Tracy Ruddell, vice president of marketing assistant museum, where technology is on display as part of the show "Last Dinosaur".
"As a museum all that matters are real-world objects," said Ruddell. "But being able to give life to prehistoric dinosaurs was something really amazing."
Worldwide, museums and art galleries have increasingly incorporated their technology exposures, which can be accessed through mobile applications.
"Augmented reality allows us to do things with goals that would never see in the physical world because, of course, we have to preserve specimens," said Ruddell. "It also enables us to provide educational information, and stories about these objects that are traditionally difficult to do."
After years of being relegated to the realm of science fiction, augmented reality is finally entering mainstream. ABI Research expects the industry to reach the 3,000 dollars in profits in 2016, from 29 million in 2010.
