Inspiration
What would happen, if anyone can simply take out their smartphone and see how the future will look like? How would plans change, if citizens can build their own version of their city to ones need?
The cityscaper app originated from the desire to actively participate in the ongoing transformation processes of our cities. It is a transformation to a more sustainable mobility or the changing offline to online retail store landscape. It can can only be successful if we engage everyone - citizens, commerce and industry, administration and politics. Many forms of participation fail to reach the majority of the involved parties. The possibilities of participation are unclear and understanding and perceiving plans of future buildings in discussions is a big challenge. With Augmented Reality we can get everyone on the same page. A clear image from the citizens perspective is worth more than panel talks, complex building plans or Q&A sessions.
In addition to projects with active participation, real estate developers can also benefit from our AR visualisations. Contrary to traditional 3D visualisations AR resolves the need to model the complete surrounding of a planned building. At the same time clients can experience the vision from all point of views and can better relate since they are part of the space.
What it does
The cityscaper app visualises building plans with AR as if construction is already complete. With a smartphone or tablet users can walk through the space to get a good grasp how a building fits in the city. In projects with active participation users can also create their own drafts. They can place objects from a catalog and augment their surroundings with new trees, benches, lamps or whatever they desire.
How we built it
The core app is built with Unity, ARCore, Blender and a firebase backend as a content delivery network. During the challenge we extended our app with the new Geospatial API that allows us to place virtual content precisely at the location of the project. For the challenge to test it, we modelled an active construction project of Google. The "Arnulfpost" in Munich Germany: https://realestate.withgoogle.com/arnulfpost/ With the API and with precise open GIS data model of the city in conjunction with google maps we were able to place it without leaving our office in Aachen. Without the need to be on premise it allows us to provide our services to everyone. Additionally with the fast and easy localisation provided, our app is now much easier to use. We are now one step closer to making our app accessible for everyone.
Challenges we ran into
The wintertime and snow presents a challenge to outdoor AR applications. Nevertheless with a few frozen fingers and the video we hope we can give you a nice grasp of the on location experience.
What's next for cityscaper
First, like the attached development version we want to release a new version of our app that includes the new Geospatial API features. After that we focus on developing a platform that everyone can use to upload architectural models and place them in the real world as a SaaS.
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