Tustan AR

The app is a kind of time machine. It takes back wooden castle existed in IX-XVI centuries. It was a customs on the road through the Carpathian Mountains.

Mykhaylo Rozhko has found traces on the rocks nearly 50 years ago when he first came to Urych to a special place where humans creatively augmented the nature. The idea to reconstruct the castle came became a dream that his son Vasyl Rozhko is supporting now.

It came a long story of measurements and refinement. Reconstruction has been started from the manual measurement of about 4000 locations where wooden planks were placed on the stones in 1971-1977. The first scientific baked graphic reconstruction was made with pencil on paper based on known architecture sample of the time some wooden remains with accuracy up to 90%. In the most developed 5th building period in XIII century it was up to 5 floors 3,5 - 5 meters high each – 25 m total. Technology evolved, laser distance measurement has become accessible and measurements were performed again. It was not enough again. Some parts of the rocks are not accessible covered with trees. Drones helped to reach that places and photogrammetry reconstruction provided centimeters to millimeters accuracy. That way were achieved both stones and castle models in modern computer graphics understanding. Matching and putting into mobile devices that work outdoors in different weather conditions was a year-long technological challenge for SoftServe R&D team. Now It comes alive in real time on historical site outdoor and can be reviewed indoor with images placed with an app in App Store and Play Market.

Nowadays we can rebuild or even 3D print full-scale castle and it’s not going to be the authentic one. Thus the dream achieved valued side effect. It clearly appeared that the rocks are also being destroyed in time and we can save this legacy.

With augmented reality, curious minds can feel the cultural-historical phenomena. We should know who we were to go confidently to brighter future.