digital unfolding of reality through augmented interpretative representation
Dür.air is a mobile augmented reality application conceived as a field-based extension of the scientific and epistemological framework developed within the n-Dame_Heritage project. Its name reflects its core ambition: the digital unfolding of reality through augmented interpretative representation — reconciling observation, interpretation, and documentation at the place and moment where scientific observation is produced, by embedding spatial, temporal, and semantic information directly within in situ investigation.
In archaeology, conservation–restoration, architectural history, materials science, and landscape studies, knowledge emerges through situated practices: inspection, comparison, measurement, annotation, and the progressive construction of interpretative hypotheses. Where 3D digitisation often separates acquisition and interpretation in time and space, dür.air keeps geometry, semantics, and observation tightly coupled in a single mobile and autonomous environment.
Combining persistent augmented reality tracking, real-time LiDAR sensing, and on-device photogrammetric reconstruction, the platform supports a progressive “unfolding” of the object or site — an evolving augmented representation built across successive field sessions. On a single device (currently iPad Pro or iPhone Pro with LiDAR) and without network connectivity, it covers the full chain of field documentation: annotation, structured semantic description, metric measurement, dense 3D modelling, orthophoto and profile computation, interactive analysis, and the replay of spatio-temporal observation trajectories. Geometry remains a support for interpretation, memory, and cumulative reasoning.
When connectivity is available, projects can be deposited on a server node for institutional archive, sharing, and web publication — while field work itself stays fully offline.
A short overview of dür.air in the field: persistent AR, LiDAR sensing, on-device reconstruction and semantic enrichment.
The scientific paper, field stories and selected public projects.
The methodological reference for dür.air, published in the ISPRS Archives.
Livio De Luca, Florent Comte and Anthony Pamart. Open-access companion page with abstract, figures and citation, linking to the original article.
12 February 2026 · CC BY 4.0Recent field experiments documenting how dür.air is used in real heritage research contexts.
Instant photogrammetry, photo annotation with 3D reprojection, colour-class legend and web publication.
17 September 2026 · Amiens
In situ documentation of a 15th-century manuscript: rectified photography, spatialised annotations and light photogrammetry.
10 June 2026 · Aix-en-Provence
Rapid photogrammetry and spatialised annotation on cast mouldings at the Galerie des moulages.
6 June 2026 · Paris
Polychrome sculpture study combining voice annotations, alteration mapping and spatialised LIBS analysis.
20 May 2026 · LRMHA curated selection of public projects highlighted on this dür.air node.
Video tutorials now cover the whole dür.air workflow, for beta users. They follow the operational chain from project creation and in situ capture — LiDAR or photogrammetry — through reconstruction, annotation and semantic enrichment, to reporting, export and publication on a server node. Each recording is paired with a short explanation, in English and in French.
Join the dür.air community through live training sessions and the beta testing program.
Following a few months of beta testing, we are organizing a live presentation and training webinar for current and future dür.air users. The sessions will introduce the application’s main features and guide participants through the complete workflow, from field acquisition and geometric reconstruction to semantic enrichment, data export, and web publication.
We are currently recruiting the first group of beta testers for dür.air. The beta program is open to heritage researchers and professionals interested in testing the application in real fieldwork situations and contributing feedback to improve the system.
The institutional counterpart of the offline app: a self-contained site an organisation runs under its own authority. It receives projects, publishes vocabularies and annotation templates, and serves the web viewer. Field work stays on the device; the node is contacted only when someone chooses to sync.
Houses. Several institutions can each open a house on the same node, with its own name, logo, website and public space. One person keeps a single account and can belong to several houses.
Roles. A collaborator joins shared programs, a depositor sends archives, a publisher curates what is already public under the house branding, and an administrator manages branding, members and storage. On a given project, a reader consults, others enrich the documentation, and a steward leads the program.
Storage. Conversion and the viewer stay on the node. Each house can keep its archives on its own server, reached through a standard object-storage protocol (S3); the data remain with the house, and project identifiers do not change. The app connects with the node’s public URL and the user’s email; a personal token then handles the sync.
dür.air is developed at the CNRS MAP laboratory (UPR 2002) within the ERC project n-Dame_Heritage (ERC-2021-Advanced Grant), in connection with the Notre-Dame de Paris scientific action. Complementary support has been provided by CNRS MITI, the French Ministry of Culture, the Fondation des Sciences du Patrimoine, EquipEx+ ESPADON, and E-RIHS ERIC.