Master Thesis | Hochschule Darmstadt | Bahnpark Augsburg | 2026

An AR guide for Snap Spectacles Gen 5, built as my master’s thesis at Hochschule Darmstadt. The venue is Bahnpark Augsburg – a heritage-listed 1906 locomotive roundhouse that’s home to one of southern Germany’s largest historical train collections. It centres on the museum’s new permanent exhibition “Time Travel: Locomotives tell European history”, with two standout exhibits: the Imperial Train of Empress Elisabeth and the Orient Express.

The experience layers virtual historical characters, European history and the physical trains themselves – visitors move through story points at their own pace. Control is by gaze and hand gesture, with voice input across 40+ languages as a fallback through Snap OS. Because the Spectacles are lightweight and standalone, visitors stay visible to each other the whole time. The project is still a work in progress – visitor testing at the museum is planned for summer 2026.

diekunstbaustelle.de/project/railxr-im-bahnpark-augsburg

bahnpark-augsburg.de

Thesis ongoing, due August 2026. Supervised by Prof. Dr. Jan Barkmann and Prof. Dr. Paul Grimm. Conceived and directed overall by Wolfgang Hauck (dieKunstBauStelle e.V.).

From Landsberger Tagblatt, April 2026.

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