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Jonas Rothe, Founder and CEO of TimeRide, joined us at X Design Week for a fireside chat on re-experiencing history with VR time travels. Time travelling was Jonas's childhood dream. He studied cultural management. With TimeRide, he tried to connect the dots between history and tech.

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Jonas began by discussing the potential of VR for time travelling. He explained that VR is the best tech to make time travelling happen, to create an illusion and immerse visitors back in time. TimeRide currently offers location-based senseums in Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin. The experience is 45 mins guided tour including VR stations indoors and outdoors in the city. It gives visitors a taste of the past and interprets historical content for them. The VR experience includes models of historical scenes and eras.

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Jonas explained that due to the pandemic, TimeRide had to develop a new solution that could function outside the senseums. As a result, they launched the TimeRide Go experience, which is a guided city using VR headsets. The experience facilitates exploring the city as it is today, and at particular locations, wear VR headsets to see how the same location looked back in time. It gives travellers a better view of the city and how it has changed over time.

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Later in the fireside chat, Jonas added that VR has the potential for scalability, enhancing hardware and software aspects and offering interactivity. One way to think about it is to develop self-guided experiences with AR glasses. Jonas commented that the next thing could be location-based solutions where you see yourself in place in reality. It could support deeper interpretation and storytelling. In the European context, for example, we receive a significant number of visitors who are interested in the culture of the destination and would like to experience it. VR could just be the solution to offer travellers a richer experience.

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To conclude, Jonas added that hardware and software should be equally considered. The role of tech developers is key. However, at the same time, the input from cultural institutions in destinations, such as museums and galleries, is of equal importance. The knowledge such institutions hold should be accessible. Collaboration between stakeholders requires to go more in depth and not just stay at the surface level.