How it works
One download, then the place does the talking
Five things the app does, and the one honest caveat about the fifth.
01
Discover and download
Search for a park, town or tour. Each one tells you how long it takes, which languages it is narrated in and how much room it needs before you commit.
Do it on the wifi at the gate. From then on the tour is on the phone: narration, maps, every clip.
02
Walk, and be found
Stops have a radius, not a queue. Cross into one and the guide begins; leave and it lets you go. The map shows the route, the ruins and how far off you are.
At Kolmanskop the first stop opens thirty metres out, on the ridge where the houses come into view.
03
Look at the year you choose
Two layers of the same view, and your finger between them. Drag towards the era and the room fills back in; drag back and the sand returns. The reconstruction always carries its label.
On phones with the sensors for it, the same scene anchors in the camera at the bearing the photograph was taken on.
04
Tap the plaque indoors
Satellites do not reach through a roof. A tag on the doorframe does: touch the phone to it and that room opens, with the photographs taken in it presented as plates — mounted, ruled, dated, uncropped.
A soft double tap under your thumb and a low chime, so you know it took.
05
Swipe through what the staff wrote
A feed of short clips, one per screen, contributed through the portal by the people who work at the site. No counters, no hearts, no autoplay into the next thing.
Each one is approved by the tour's curator and credited to whoever wrote it.
The caveat, stated plainly
Augmented reality needs a camera, motion sensors and a phone recent enough to have both. Where that is missing, the app takes the same path it takes on any handset without them: the live camera with the historical clip cross-faded over it, under your finger.
That is a real product path, not a fallback we are embarrassed about. Nobody arrives at a stop and is told their phone is not good enough.