A See-through Vision with Handheld Augmented Reality for Sightseeing

We propose a see-through vision with augmented reality (AR) for increasing the quality of the experiences in the activities of sightseeing. In the sightseeing activities, there are certain temporal and spatial limitations when sightseers are gazing on the real objects. In this research, we aim to eliminate the spatial limitations caused by the inability to see farther objects through opaque surfaces by using see-through vision technology with alpha blending, and to make the appearance of the target objects with 3D effect based on parallax effect. We focus on the platform of handheld devices that provides AR experiences with high accurate alignment of virtual objects on pre-captured real scene images based on cube mapping method. This paper describes the engineering methodology that we have used to develop our prototype system and the implementation of the prototype system for confirming our approach. The results about how the prototype system performs on a real site are reported in this paper.