Case Details
Project in brief: The Yellow Crane Tower AR Smart Guide overlays directions, historical content, and interactive experiences onto the physical site. EasyAR Mega provides large-scale visual positioning, the YuanYou XR spatial intelligence platform organizes the route and content flow, and AR glasses present the “Immortal on a Crane,” poets, and past-and-present scenes in place.
Use case: Smart cultural tourism and digital heritage interpretation at Yellow Crane Tower Device: XREAL Air 2 Ultra AR glasses Core experiences: AR wayfinding, location-triggered content, a digital guide, and historical scene reconstruction
Project Context: Bringing History Back into Place
Yellow Crane Tower brings together architecture, murals, poetry, and centuries of legend. Conventional visits often rely on signs, audio guides, or in-person narration, asking visitors to switch constantly between the physical site and descriptive material. Historical figures, architectural changes, and viewpoints can therefore be difficult to understand in context.
The AR Smart Guide connects each piece of content with a specific location. As visitors move through the tower, directions, digital characters, and historical scenes appear in the relevant spaces, turning a sequence of stops into a continuous cultural journey.
Visitor Journey: One Route, Multiple Layers of Culture
Visitors can rent AR glasses at the on-site kiosk and begin the guided experience. The digital character appears in the physical environment and works with route cues to lead visitors to each experience point. At the relevant location, the system presents mural interpretation, poets and historical figures, reconstructed scenes, or past-and-present views.
Crane imagery and digital characters bring the tower’s founding legend into the visitor’s immediate surroundings.
Spatial interpretation connects the murals with figures associated with the historical record of Yellow Crane Tower.
Digital representations of Tang and Song poets move beyond the mural surface and appear within the visitor’s view.
Historical images are aligned with current viewpoints to help visitors understand changes to the tower and Wuhan’s cityscape.
Implementation: Positioning, Content, and Hardware Working Together
This experience is more than a video displayed in glasses. The system continuously relates the visitor’s position and viewing direction to the site, then presents the appropriate content at the intended location. Each part of the solution has a distinct role:
Provides large-scale visual positioning and spatial alignment so digital content can appear at project-defined locations.
Organizes the guided route, content points, digital characters, and interactive flow while supporting ongoing content maintenance.
XREAL Air 2 Ultra presents directions and three-dimensional content within the visitor’s field of view.
Project Value: Turning Technology into a Coherent Visitor Journey
For visitors, directions, interpretation, and interaction become parts of one continuous journey through the physical site. For the operator, separating spatial positioning from the content platform makes routes and digital assets easier to maintain within one project framework and leaves room for future updates to characters, interpretation, and interactions.
The currently available public materials document how the project is used on site. Metrics such as visitor volume, completion rate, satisfaction, and operating efficiency can be added once a consistent measurement method and publication approval are available.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Yellow Crane Tower AR Smart Guide?
It is an AR-glasses experience that runs within Yellow Crane Tower and overlays directions, digital characters, mural interpretation, poetry, and past-and-present scenes onto the visitor’s view of the physical site.
What role does EasyAR Mega play?
EasyAR Mega provides large-scale visual positioning and spatial alignment, enabling the device to determine its position and orientation and present content at project-defined locations.
Which device is used for the experience?
The current case uses XREAL Air 2 Ultra AR glasses. Specific display and optical capabilities should be confirmed against the device manufacturer’s latest official information.
How should another destination evaluate an AR guide?
Start by defining the experience area, route length, content points, device format, operating model, and update frequency. These inputs provide the basis for assessing spatial capture, content production, on-site delivery, and maintenance.
Planning an AR guide for a large cultural-tourism site?
Explore EasyAR MegaImage source: existing public materials from the Sight+ Yellow Crane Tower project. Updated August 2026.
