Project Hourglass
Playful Design, Speculative
Android MR
Team:2
Role: Programmer,Director
Github:
https://github.com/suifangzhou/projecthourglass
"Utilizing mixed reality technology to go back in time and revisit the tourist attraction"
quicklook:
Concept
Our concept involves replacing traditional tourist guidebooks with an immersive and informative MR experience. This would enable automatic display of relevant information based on both gyroscope and GPS data, eliminating the need to flip through pages to find the right entry. Additionally, our solution would allow for a significantly larger amount of content compared to traditional pamphlets. With the use of VR technology, landmarks' histories can be brought to life in a way that's only possible in a virtual environment. To achieve this, we propose using the hololens as one of our options for implementing both AR and VR effect.
scenario
At historical landmarks, use an AR visual display over the real world environment to witness virtual reenactments where they actually happened. We used Boston Old State House as an instance to illustrate our concept
By incorporating time-elapsed features, visitors can witness the changes that have taken place over time through the lens.
How it works?
Two prerequisites to get this MR effect:
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Users need to locate themselves at the given place (which means GPS data is required here).
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Users need to look at the historical resort (here, the Old State House building) in a specific angle (thus, gyroscope data is utilized). Specifically, We utilize gyroscope data to mimic a rangefinder-focusing effect, similar to those commonly used in vintage rangefinder cameras like Leica.
Three step to trigger the effect:
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users arrived the given location by following the AR GPS navigation
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initialize VR mode
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look through lens and match the view angle
As we were constrained by resource, we could only implement our concept using VR Android. The figure illustrates the gyroscope data that we incorporated into our app, which was developed using Processing 3. The Hourglass project can be displayed using Google Cardboard VR