Virtual Architecture Museum app review: a virtual tour of historical architecture that was never made

Introduction

As an avid history buff, I was extremely excited to come across this app. Virtual Architecture Museum advertises itself as a unique 3D experience allowing you to virtually tour some famous architecture that was never made or is no longer in existence. Needless to say for someone that loves history, this app sounded like a fantastic prospect. This is a free app and it's compatible with the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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An Architectural Journey

There are actually quite a few very well produced architectural apps within the App Store. So if an app is going to succeed in this category it has to present something that we really haven't seen before. In this respect Virtual Architecture Museum falls a bit flat .There's nothing in this app that we haven't seen before and, in fact, it's not really much of an app at all. This is nothing more than a glorified portal for accessing videos on YouTube.

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Besides the fact this app is nothing more than a content provider, there are also a few other issues with this app. For one thing, when you first open up the app you're greeted by some Cyrillic alphabet letters and if you don't speak Russian you probably won't understand what they're saying. I was close to giving up and simply closing out the app but it did eventually load only for me to discover that it was simply a list of videos that were available on YouTube. There are no instructions, although you don't really need any as there isn't much to this app. On the positive side you're not inundated with ads or in app purchases, but you'll probably be highly disappointed with the content. This app will require 48 MB of available space on your iOS device.

How it works

When you open up the app, and it eventually does load, you'll be presented with a list of historical architecture that either was made and has since been torn down or was never actually constructed. This list is simply a series of links to YouTube videos. That's all there really is to this. There is a settings icon in the top right corner but all you can really do with this is change the video quality or change the default language that the app is using.

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So the only question that really remains is are the videos any good? They're actually of a high quality and they do provide a lot of historical background which is a good thing if you’re a history buff. The big problem I have with the content in this app is that it's all of a Russian nature. If you're going to provide an app that simply links to historical architecture, it would be nice if there was a little more variety. A good place to start would be to include architecture from various different European cities, perhaps Asia or the Middle East, and even the modern world in North America or Australia. Unfortunately, this app doesn't provide any of that type of content.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Videos are of a high-quality

Cons

• The app is nothing more than a video access portal
• Only provides links to Russian architecture
• No instructions

Final Words

Virtual Architecture Museum is an app that bills itself as a unique 3D historical architecture experience. While it does have some links to YouTube videos of Russian historical architecture, that's about all you'll get out of this app. It's very limited in its scope and it's probably of limited interest to most people.