THE future of Swindon town centre will never look the same again, thanks to augmented reality company The Carto Group.

The company, headed by founder and CEO Tim Hughes, has unveiled an old wooden model of Swindon town centre complete with AR goggles, enabling viewers to see holograms of 3D buildings still at the planning stage.

The hologram shows what’s under construction as well as those planned to be built in the future, including the North Star Leisure arena and indoor ski slope.

It hopes to work with Swindon Borough Council in the future to bring planning applications to life.

Tim said: “We’ve put all the major development projects in the town centre through augmented reality.

“It’s bringing public consolations into people’s front rooms.

“If people can do something in the comfort of their front room from the comfort of their sofa there’s going to be a lot more engagement and feedback for the council around these developments.

“It’s all about transparency for them, and we can help with that with our technology.”

He added: “Rather than looking at boring graphical boards that people put up they can get properly immersed in it and see what it’s really going to be like.”

“Their thoughts have been really positive, and this type of technology is what they’re starting to look at now.

"They’re under significant resource pressures so being able to adopt technology like this enables them to keep running the town efficiently.

“That’s just one string to our bow, our geo-spacial augmented reality gets used for a number of different things by urban planners, architects and engineers in the construction industry.”

The company is already working with the borough council and technology company Cisco to monitor congestion on the A420 in real-time and visualise the data.

“They have to get their trucks in in 10-minute slots,” says Tim, “we want to be able predict what’s going to happen and help design the infrastructure, so BMW and Honda stay in the town.”