Change the way you see the world around you with Zubr’s AR trails
Zubr’s augmented reality trails transform walks through cities, parks and visitor attractions into interactive experiences. By combining AR visuals with expertly crafted storytelling, we create unexpected moments of joy and discovery: revealing forgotten facts, beloved local legends, and hidden narratives through engaging digital content.
Increase footfall and deepen connection
Easily updateable, simple to maintain
Immersive experiences for all ages
Seamlessly blending digital content with the real world
Discover hidden histories
Immersive gamification and tantalising collectibles
Increase footfall and deepen connection
Zubr’s custom augmented reality trails combine the best of walking tours and treasure hunts with interactive games, challenges and hidden collectibles. By designing AR trails as walking routes around key areas of a city, museum, or historic site, Zubr highlights areas of particular interest. From meeting animated characters to peeling back layers of history to discover how a location once looked, our AR trails offer an impactful way of increasing footfall around town centres whilst deepening users’ connection to a place.
By raising awareness of cultural heritage, AR trails help instill a sense of ownership and pride in a local community, like our Discover Ashfield AR app made for Ashfield District Council. With options to engage independent businesses by running promotional discounts or rewards, AR trails can benefit residents as well as tourists by increasing local investment and spending.
No extra fees and no hidden costs
Available through our custom webAR solution, which embraces the ease and accessibility of third-party platforms like 8th Wall minus the prohibitive licensing fees, or as a downloadable AR app, we’re certain we can develop an AR trail to suit your budget and excite your visitors.
Seamlessly blending digital content with the real world
For areas where local restrictions prevent physical installations or alterations, AR trails are a powerful way to connect online and IRL experiences. Zubr has developed numerous solutions to aligning virtual content with physical environments, including ARCore/Kit, compass calibration, geolocation and more. This ensures the content in our AR trails remains perfectly positioned to deliver a believable AR experience, anchored to the real world instead of arbitrarily placed. Our Liberty Trail AR app allows users to explore key Revolutionary War battlefields in South Carolina, with our reconstructed 3D terrains perfectly aligned with the modern day environment.
We offer a range of AR trail solutions: from bespoke trail apps with maps and GPS-tracking like the Beckford’s Tower AR app, to using simple QR-code technology to trigger experiences as users autonomously discover them along their walk like ‘In Gravesham Footsteps.’
The public have fully embraced QR codes since COVID-19, meaning people often automatically engage with an AR trail when they spot their first QR code. Whilst they aren’t the most attractive images, the recognisable shape acts as a teaser in itself for something worth seeing; after the first one, every visitor will recognise additional trail points via the printed image, providing an ‘Easter Egg Hunt’ that will keep visitors engaged. This reduces the need for lengthy instructions, increasing accessibility for younger users.
Easily updateable, simple to maintain
Zubr’s modular approach means each trail point can be easily updated, perfect for adding seasonal updates and bonus surprises. Our augmented reality trail ‘Victorian Vauxhall’ for Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens originally started as a seven stop trail, but thanks to the trail’s popularity and with new ideas to bring to life in AR we expanded the trail with a further five stops a year after launch.
Existing trails can be expanded to encourage exploration of a new area either by in-house staff via a CMS or microsite, or through ongoing support from Zubr; our team is happy to refresh and maintain the content for our AR trails to keep them optimised as the technology advances as part of our SLA.
Vauxhall One commissioned Zubr to create an Augmented Reality History Trail (...) We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Zubr to organisations looking for creative and engaging ways to bring the past to life.
Isobel Pickles, Marketing & Communications Manager, Vauxhall One
Vauxhall One commissioned Zubr to create an Augmented Reality History Trail (...) We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Zubr to organisations looking for creative and engaging ways to bring the past to life.
Isobel Pickles, Marketing & Communications Manager, Vauxhall One
Discover hidden histories
Zubr designs and develops AR trails which are entirely unique, full of custom 2D and 3D content and unexpected facts. Zubr’s team creates spectacular 2D and 3D assets for each AR trail, including accurate facades and interiors, 3D-modelled artefacts, and animated historical characters. We specialise in reconstructing historical sites with 3D models, animating paintings and statues, creating wearable costumes, and developing hands-on experiences with museum objects like stamps or mini games. We can also embed video and audio content, and link out to additional web content to facilitate greater learning.
Zubr consults with tour guides, local historians, museum curators and subject matter experts to unlock the best historic nuggets for our AR trails: from forgotten facts to beloved local myths and legends. Our heritage AR trails include the browser-based ‘Journey Through Time’ London AR Trail – a summer event which showed iconic London landmarks throughout history using archival imagery; ‘Hidden Station’ – a series of AR posters which reveal local’s lived experiences of Bridgwater train station; our ‘Window to the Past’ AR app for Bristol Old Vic which includes 38 historical artefacts, modelled and ‘hidden’ in AR around the theatre for visitors to discover; and ‘Benaki 1821’ – an AR trail of over 30 objects around the Benaki Museum in Athens.
Delight all ages
AR trails are particularly captivating for Harder to Reach Audiences, especially Younger Generations and Families, and Culture Seekers. By designing our AR trails so that they spark curiosity and encourage creative exploration of the area, Zubr aims to empower visitors to take control of their learning in a playful and imaginative way.
AR trail apps allow us to design layers of information that visitors can dip in and out of, depending on their preferences and pre-existing knowledge. We design bespoke, intuitive and user-friendly interfaces which appeal to young and old.
User analytics reveal the dwell time, app usage, and how many stories visitors unlock, providing useful information about how visitors are engaging with the AR trail, which stops are most popular, and what percentage of experiences remain undiscovered.
Immersive gamification and tantalising collectibles
Our AR trails combine immersion and interactivity, with gamified AR experiences to engage, entertain and educate all ages. We frequently hide collectibles to be discovered, unlock reward badges at milestones, and challenge users to solve puzzles or perform actions to accomplish tasks.
