In my previous article I was talking about how 3D can transform education. Today I want to share how augmented and virtual reality helps people not only learn, but also have fun, spend some quality time with friends and coworkers, and enjoy games. Today’s case is about one of our clients here in Ukraine, a Family Quest Games Company.
This client came to us because they were building a new quest room, and decided to make it more innovative and advanced. Our team is always happy to generate new ideas and offer out-of-the-box solutions for augmented and virtual reality, so we got down to business straight away and started by analyzing the structure of the quest.
This room was created based on a very popular, cultish Hollywood supernatural comedy called Ghostbusters, by Columbia Pictures. I am sure you have seen it and you love the movie as much as our team does, and if you have not, watch it today, it’s hilarious.
After analyzing the ideas and plans of the client, we immediately came up with where and how, at what points we would be able to implement augmented reality, so that it would be useful, exciting and add value to the overall quest experience.
We decided to use a popular character from the movie everyone knows: the ugly but cute entity called Slimer. The players' tablet was disguised as a device for the game and became a “super point” for the quest.
There was a trap in the room, and when someone opened it, Slimer would suddenly appear on the tablet screen and begin to interact with the players.
Of course, the guests were excited, firstly, because no one expected that this was real at all, and secondly, Slimer was not only fun, but also participated in the quest! There were wires in the box that needed to be connected to complete the assignment, and Slimer was just telling and showing them how to do it correctly.
In addition, Slimer shone and sparkled with different colors and created an amazing atmosphere of the game, bringing happiness and joy, although sometimes it frightened the players, because, well, remember this is augmented reality, so Slimer looked as ugly as he was in the movie, and it might be scary at times.
Technical issues and challenges:
Let’s not forget about the technical side and some of the challenges that our team faced while working on the quest. The most interesting (and challenging) thing was to do everything very subtle, so the appearance of Slimer was a surprise and created a “wow effect” for the guests.
Augmented reality was created in the “Unity3D” game engine. The main challenge was to make a very recognizable marker - the image by which Slimer is recognized when he appears.
Therefore, we decided that it is possible to make this marker out of the entire electrical box. Of course, we tried different options, but the one that you will see below is the best one. It was also a good quality goal not to add unnecessary and unnecessary elements on top in order to preserve the aesthetics of the boxing.
This is how it looked before:
After:
We added a yellow and black “hazard tape” around the perimeter, and it added an additional emotional aspect of danger to the game. If you look closely, you can see that the diagonals have different distances and patterns, so this has become the tracker-mark for starting the video and showing Slimer on the client's tablet.
There was no such thing in the original design of the quest, but we needed to add it to create the maximum possible point for activating the augmented reality video.
As a result, this is what we created in Unity:
Then we connected it to a real marker. And this is how we got a super ghost!
Notice also how Slimer shows and teaches the participants in different colors and flickers which wires to connect where.
Augmented reality is perfect for showing ghosts. Look!
I am sure you now want to take the quest yourself, right? This is why we love what we do and I am so grateful, we have these clients who want to co-create something outstanding using the latest technology.
Let me know what type of cases you are interested in. I will be glad to share our success stories, challenges and industry lessons with you.