App Makes WWI’s Stories High Tech

A new app created by a Burbank company gives viewers a chance to learn about World War I and visit a memorial now under construction in Washington, D.C. Code-Headquarters LLC partnered with TechApplication.com LLC, in Ventura, to create the free app for their client, the Doughboy Foundation, the charitable arm of the United States World War One Centennial Commission. The WWI Virtual Explorer App is filled with video game-style 3D stories and more than 50 videos. Code-Headquarters created much of the content while TechApplication.com provided the video. While the National WWI Memorial is still a construction site, the virtual explorer allows users to visit the location and see the work progressing. Also, the app can place a scaled version of the 1.8-acre memorial on user images of backyards or driveways. Andranik Aslanyan, founder and lead programmer of Code-Headquarters, said this is the first augmented reality app for a federal memorial. “It is a great way to tell the different stories with a new technology,” he said. “It has a lot of applications outside just the WWI memorial.” Theo Mayer, president of TechApplication.com, said he knew of Aslanyan and his company from his days as an adjunct professor at Woodbury University in Burbank. “(I) reached out to him and his very brilliant and innovative game studio to help us make this concept real,” Mayer said.