What is a Sitsim?

“Sitsim” is short for “Situated Simulation” a term that describes an experience in which viewers use a smartphone or tablet to see a reconstruction of the past – or a vision of the future – at the precise place in which they stand in the present.

Sitsims allow users to immediately understand and connect the landscape around them with the landscape and activities of the past or future reconstructed in the Sitsim. Historical objects or photographs can be easily taken back to their former locations, or museum objects can be re-inserted into their previous surroundings. Pop-up balloons allow users to find out more information about the scenes.

How are Sitsims made?

Creating a Sitsim requires 3 things: some historical information about the scene to be reconstructed; information about the terrain to be reconstructed; and the Sitsim AR Editor package for the Unity game engine.

Something about the historical information and what needs to be done with it before it can be used in the Sitsim editor

Something about the terrain

The Sitsim AR Editor package for Unity and its guidelines can be downloaded from the bottom of this page.

Sitsims in use

We used a version of the Sitsim AR Editor in the CINE project to create the Vágar app.

some content about the Vágar app

Download the Sitsim AR Editor

Interested in the technicals?

Our collaborators at the University of Oslo have published a number of academic papers describing the development of the Sitsim AR Editor – find them all at http://www.sitsim.no/