Users of the WWI Memorial Virtual Explorer app from the Doughboy Foundation can go on an augmented reality (AR)–driven virtual field trip to the National WWI Memorial from anywhere in the world. The app brings a “walk-around-inside-it” digital 3D model of the Memorial to students at home or in classrooms, using iOS or Android smartphones and tablets.
The Virtual Explorer app is filled with interactive and experiential WWI history:
“The Timeline Tower” is an interactive 3D timeline, two stories high, featuring more than 50 key events from WWI, with images and short narratives organized in chronological order;
“The Sinking Of The Lusitania” is a video game–style presentation of the crucial event that was instrumental in drawing America into the global conflict;
“Vehicles From WWI” presents interactive 3D models of breakthrough vehicles that came out of WWI, including airplanes, tanks, motorized ambulances, and even a 1917 Harley Davidson motorcycle;
“How WWI Changed America” includes more than 50 micro-documentaries (each under two minutes) in nine categories featuring leading WWI historians on subjects such as the impact of WWI on women, African Americans, and Native Americans, plus stories about immigrants, citizenship, propaganda, and the 1918 pandemic;
“The Military History of WWI” is a multipart exploration of how America exploded from a modest standing army of fewer than 130,000 to a global military powerhouse with 4.7 million men and women in uniform in just 18 months; and
“Stories Of Service” gives students the tools and means to create research projects about WWI veterans from the local community or their families. The stories can be submitted into the app, resulting in an auto-narrated story with images shared with Virtual Explorer app users everywhere.