ARTimeTravel: Understanding Spatial Changes in Heritage Sites Over Time through Web-Based Augmented Reality Serious Games

Heritage sites, as dynamically evolving social spaces, undergo spatial and cultural changes over time that are important for cultural heritage conservation and visitor experience. Despite this importance, existing research has gaps in illustrating these temporal changes, especially in the use of Augmented Reality (AR) for spatial change demonstrations. In this paper, we propose ARTimeTravel, an AR-based serious game grounded in the three guiding principles of Heritagescape theory: boundaries, cohesion, and visibility. ARTimeTravel aims to demonstrate spatial changes in heritage sites over time through immersive experiences. Evaluation results indicated that it greatly enhances users’ understanding of these changes. We anticipate that future research will provide a more comprehensive solution for the presentation of heritage sites, thus contributing to cultural heritage preservation and education.