In order to support pedestrians in the tasks of orientation and wayfinding with mobile devices appropriate visualizations of their location, its surrounding, and background information are needed. In this paper we present two complementary concepts for the combination of realistic views and location specific information that can be implemented with current generation PDAs and next generation cellular phones. The first employs video clips that were taken along every path in a city which are augmented by location information. It is shown how multimedia clips consisting of videos and textual information can be stored and transferred using the SMIL standard from the W3C consortium. The second approach supports navigation by the overlay of virtual signposts in panoramic images taken for every decision point, i.e. street junctions, in a city. We argue that the location- and orientation-synchronized presentation of (previously recorded) realistic views in combination with location specific information is an intuitive complement to map based visualization on the one hand and less invasive and resource demanding than augmented reality systems with head mounted displays on the other hand.     «

In order to support pedestrians in the tasks of orientation and wayfinding with mobile devices appropriate visualizations of their location, its surrounding, and background information are needed. In this paper we present two complementary concepts for the combination of realistic views and location specific information that can be implemented with current generation PDAs and next generation cellular phones. The first employs video clips that were taken along every path in a city which are augme...     »