Cahokia AR Tour Reviews

After arriving we learned that the museum was closed, however a virtual reality tour was offered via CahokiaARTour. Mind you, the museum is free, but because it’s closed, you’ll need to shell out $5. Not that big of a deal, but a little irritating to go from free to $5. Only after you download it do you find out that headphones are required. Seriously?!?! I’m literally sitting in you’re parking lot and NOW you tell me that headphones are required? How many people just carry headphones with them? Wasted $5 because there’s no option if you don’t have headphones with you. On top of that, CahokiaARTour is only compatible with certain devices. We wanted to use an iPad for a bigger viewing screen, but my iPad was not compatible, so we had to use the phone. Needless to say, I’ll never be going back to Cahokia, nor will I ever donate money to them ever again. You’re welcome for the $5 donation, and thanks for screwing people over with your useless app. Oh, and if people still want to visit this horribly managed historic site, use the restroom before you go as they failed to put in portable restrooms. Saw a man forced to use the restroom in the wooded area by the back parking lot. Supposed to be a sacred site, but with no portable restrooms, they don’t give people any option but to urinate on this sacred site. Way to go, Illinois!

I purchased CahokiaARTour at Cahokia and wished I hadn’t. It froze my phone and never worked correctly. Conferred with other folks who had made the same mistake of purchasing and were dealing with the same issues. It never worked while we were at Cahokia, and later when I was experiencing odd phone issues I deleted it, which solved the problem. Better beware!

CahokiaARTour was poorly designed. There are a few simple directions that would have made it more user friendly.
I didn’t it figure out what they really wanted you to do until the final marker.
Also, it’s ridiculous to offer only headphone listening. What if you are with someone.
I paid for CahokiaARTour and it was a lot waste.

Happily paid for CahokiaARTour , downloaded it, and it froze at the first sign. Rebooted the phone and it froze again. I think a warning to consider not using a small phone screen would be nice. Even if CahokiaARTour had worked, reading the text and seeing the graphics in the sun on a tiny screen would’ve been unpleasant or impossible.

Evidently other people have got it working but the instructions are extremely obscure and I was not able to get the AR function to work at all. It keeps telling you to follow an arrow and the arrow just keeps vanishing and no matter which way you point it nothing happens. I've waited two decades to come here and I'm very disappointed that there's absolutely no good information to be had.

I downloaded CahokiaARTour at home and you can’t practice using till you’re at the site. On our arrival,It was 80 degrees outside in bright sunshine with my screen brightness on max. I activated the camera,focused on the ground in front of the QR& then aimed at the QR sign. Nothing! Tried multiple times without success. The screen was hard to see and if there were a compass or arrow, I couldn’t see anything. I use QR codes frequently so felt irritated and grumpy instead of amazed. Put a sunshade over every access point or make CahokiaARTour more intuitive. At least you got a $4.99 donation from me.

I was coming through on a road trip- sorry I don’t carry headphones on my person as I’m driving across the country. Thought this would be cute and informative since the visitor center is totally shut down, but can’t listen to the videos (duplicates) that show up at 3 or 4 locations because I’m not connected with my headphones. When you walk away from the sign, the video shuts off warning you you’re out of range. Ancients would have been at the site listening to birds and the sounds of city life, why can’t we when immersed in your app without headphones?

Forced into paying for and using this because interpretive center is closed indefinitely for renovations. So no paper tour guides available.

I used an iPhone. Huge mistake. You need the bigger tablet screen. Don’t forget your earbuds. Not sure what you get without them but the threats are clear.

Before you start, be sure to visit settings and turn brightness all the way up. There is a brightness icon on-screen during the tour. As far as I can tell, all it does is make a ding sound. No change in brightness.

The actual AR effects are good for such old technology. Hopefully, the tiny text for the “information points” will be more legible on a tablet. I guess there is no help for the awkward ground scanning at each stop.

Between the AR and the teensy text, CahokiaARTour is informative. I did learn a lot.

There are two included tours. There is a fair amount of repetition between the two. I learned to back out.

The Cahokia AR app is incredible. As an archaeologist familiar with the history yet who has struggled to paint a picture of what the city would have looked like in the past during visits with friends, this was invaluable. The extent of the AR experience and it’s visual impact made this most recent visit a lot more fun and easier to comprehend for my guests!

To the developers of this application: please keep this as true to itself as possible. The aesthetics, features and functionality add so much to the experience and to life as a whole. Very few apps come this close to perfection. Never change, Cahokia AR app.

CahokiaARTour is well done, it adds video animations, narrations, photos and text to tell the story of the mounds area as it was during Native American days. There are two tours, one for Monks Mound and another for the village area. Both involve walking along paved paths. Monks Mound has a staircase to access the top.

I’ve been to Cahokia on many occasions, but never like this! CahokiaARTour brings the site to life. It was easy to use, and I feel like I have been able to truly experience the the history and the culture of this important site.

Visited Cahokia while the welcome center is closed, so CahokiaARTour was a fantastic way to get more information and enhance our visit—otherwise we would’ve only had the physical signs to rely on, which would be OK but they do not have as much information as CahokiaARTour . The AR was delightful, and I liked the slider ability to change how much AR I was seeing: from wholly CG to just some AR buildings on the real landscape.

The audio tour part was also excellent, and since I was visiting with one other person, we both wore one Bluetooth earbud so we could listen while walking. Overall, I highly recommend this to enhance a visit, but ESPECIALLY if the welcome center is closed or you’re skipping it.

Such an amazing way to enhance a tour into the past! Easy to use even for someone who is not great with technology. Made history come alive. My 9 year old & my parents in their later 60s all enjoyed it.

If you’re visiting Cahokia Mounds, you might wonder if CahokiaARTour is worth the $5. I certainly think it is. It’s cool how it overlays what the city looked like hundreds of years ago over what it looks like now. It does so in a way that was easy to use. You have to have headphones if you want to do the audio tour part, so bring those!

Ideas for things to add to CahokiaARTour would be to include guides for elsewhere around the Cahokia site - even if it’s just a simple trail guide with no fancy AR.

Never expected to see what Cahokia looked like 1000 years ago superimposed right on the grounds! Can’t wait for my grandkids to see this! Its truly amazing!

To avoid distractions to other tourists near you, headphones MUST be used to hear audio.

Brings the past to life! Easy to learn use and informative!

A must have since museum is closed

A successful use of augmented reality, CahokiaARTour unobtrusively helped me visualize Cahokia as it once was!