Augmented Reality and Gamification technics for visit enhancement in archaeological parks

The use of innovative technological approaches in the field of cultural heritage is now becoming essential to preserve and enhance tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Special attention can be paid to enhancing the visitor experience using gamification approaches by exploiting new technologies. Augmented reality is one of the most significant tools that enable a special interaction between the user and the environment. The possibility of enriching the real environment with three-dimensional models opens up the possibility of narrating the real place with innovative storytelling not only of the environment itself but also and above all, telling and conveying all that is the intangible heritage that a place inevitably brings with it. To take advantage of this opportunity, the study focused on defining a methodology to apply advanced augmented reality and storytelling techniques combined with gamification techniques to enhance the visitor experience in a medium to large-scale archaeological sites. The methodology was then applied to a case study on the archaeological park of Pompeii, which saw the creation of an application prototype that demonstrated the validity of the approach.