Time changes everything — fashion, music, trends, landscapes. Take Chicago for instance. Known for its blues, world-famous hot dogs and architecture, Chicago has evolved dramatically over the years.

Yet, almost any night of the week you can head to Kingston Mines and experience those historic blues. Likewise, you can walk a few blocks and find yourself a Chicago Dog about anywhere in the city. On the contrary, it’s often difficult to visualize the changes in Chicago's architecture over time. Historic buildings are renovated, new towers alter the skyline and bricked roads are covered up in favor of pavement. That's precisely why we at Perficient Digital Labs created ChicagoAR.

Old Meets New

ChicagoAR is an augmented reality app that allows anyone with a smartphone to view Chicago's past. Like opening up a wormhole, ChicagoAR utilizes augmented reality and data anchors (the white signs seen in the video above) to superimpose historical photography upon its modern landscape in life-size proportion.

Before & After View of ChicagoAR at Union Station

Each AR experience is location specific and showcases a different era in Chicago's history. Once augmented reality is superimposed, the user can move freely, view the scenery from any angle, or even approach the life-sized augmented projection to inspect it up close (just be careful of cars).

A Look Behind the Curtain

For those interested in the technology behind ChicagoAR, check out our other articles where we breakdown our design/development approach and detail the tech stack.

ARKit Image Recognition: Testing Bounds and Capabilities

CTA-AR: Enhancing Chicago public transit with Augmented reality