A San Antonio approaches its Tricentennial, how about going back in time and seeing the Battle of the Alamo for yourself?
You don't have to be a character in "Outlander" to be able to witness the past come alive, thanks to the Texas company Imagine Virtua, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
CEO Chipp Walters says his company, Imagine Virtua, with the help of the top historians and virtual reality artists in the world, is putting together an 'Augmented Reality' tour of the Alamo which will go live in March.
He says there will be two displays. One wil be at the Witte Museum, where a tabletop diorama of San Antonio in the 1830s will come to life, giving viewers an up close and personal look at the city and the battle.
"You'll see these little people walking around and fighting," he said. "You'll see people in horse drawn carriages, and you'll see the people of San Antonio retreat into the Alamo as Santa Ana's army approaches," he said.
Augmented Reality, the technology behind the hit 'Pokemon Go,' works through your cell phone or tablet.
You download an app, or at the Witte, tablets will be provided which have the app already downloaded.
Then you look through the viewfinder of the device's camera, and the technology knows where you are, and where you are looking, and the view you see through that viewfinder is what that space where you are standing would appear in March of 1836.
He says the second venue where the Alamo will come to life is at the Alamo itself. He says people who walk around Alamo Plaza with the app downloaded to their cell phones will be able to 'see portals open' and walk into rooms. For example, you will be able to walk into the room near the Long Barracks, which no longer exists, and see Jim Bowie, dying of yellow fever, preparing to meet the Soldadas.
"Its a very amazing piece of technology," he said. "The idea that we can actually walk back in time, through a portal, and see the actual action."
And he says if you want a 'bird's eye' view of the battle, you can get that too, just like you would have seen in a hot air balloon suspended over the Alamo.
"You can walk through a portal on Alamo Plaza, and you'll see a disc on the ground," he said. "When you step on the disc, you are elevated forty or fifty feet above the actual 1836 Alamo, and you are looking down and you can see the actual fight take place."
This is not 'virtual reality' which requires goggles that block out the world around you and take you to another world. In enhanced reality, the world around you is magnified and enhanced by the technology.
Walters says the exhibitions at both places are set to be available to visitors in early March.
IMAGE; IMAGINE VIRUTA USED BY PERMISSION