Swipe, tap and dig your way across Roman London in the Museum of London’s Londinium app, our Follow That App of the Week for August 6th 2011.
Love
The original Streetmuseum app was one of the best examples of the much lauded but rarely well executed augmented reality technology – using your camera view overlaid with 3D content.
This excellent follow up takes you further back in time and adds new interactive and multi-media content, with help from TV channel History. There’s even a limited walking tour from the Museum of London.
After viewing a timeline history of Roman London, you can use the map view to explore London tapping on the pins to reveal audio, video and image content. As with the original app, the app makes good use of the iPhone’s possibilities as you dig (swipe) or blow into the iPhone’s microphone to reveal buried artifacts.
Again there is a 3D augmented reality view, although you need to be near the sites to pick anything up.
Don’t love
The digging mechanic is a clever idea, but the novelty soon wears off. Again the map view is well executed, but to save on tired fingers and to make the content easier to read, it would be useful to have a text view to explore.
Overall
It’s playful, educational and original and another winner from the Museum of London. Even better, it’s free.
Want more?
Fanboy store review: “Great to dive in and find out a little bit of roman history on one of the greatest cities in the world. Like the Excavating and little video clips. As a great Gladiator once said, “Are you not entertained?”… Yes!
Meh store review: “Well, I’ll admit that the map is helpful and well organised and one gets an interesting tour, but the main problem is that the tech is very basic. It used compass and gps, but there is nothing clever as far as AR is concerned.”
Get it on iTunes: here.
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