Inspiration
Travel planning is currently stuck in 2D. We open dozens of tabs, look at flat photos, and read text descriptions, but we struggle to get a sense of scale, geography, or atmosphere. We wanted to bridge the gap between dreaming of a trip and planning it. "Fernweh" (farsickness) was born to bring destinations into users' living rooms.
What it does
Fernweh reimagines travel research as an interactive playground.
- 2.5D Maps: Users explore tactile 2.5D maps of countries and cities on their tabletop.
- Interactive Culture: We gamified history. Users can pick up a virtual spray can to paint graffiti on the Berlin Wall or step into a custom 360° viewer atop the Berlin TV Tower.
- Immersive Cuisine: High-fidelity 3D food scans allow users to inspect local dishes like Currywurst before booking a restaurant.
- Spatialized Memories: With one click, 2D photos pop into spatial 3D volumes, making memories feel tangible.
How we built it
We built Fernweh using Unity and the Meta Presence Platform.
- Core Tech: We used Passthrough to ground the experience in reality and Scene Understanding to place the maps on physical tables.
- Interactions: The Interaction SDK powers our hand tracking, allowing users to pinch-zoom maps and naturally spray paint the wall.
- Graphics: We implemented custom shaders for the 2.5D terrain and the spatial photo effects. 3D food assets were created using photogrammetry.
Challenges we ran into
Designing UI for Mixed Reality is tricky—text needs to be legible against any real-world background. We iterated heavily on glassmorphism materials to ensure readability. We also spent significant time optimizing the "spray paint" mechanic to feel responsive and natural using hand tracking.
What's next for Fernweh
We plan to upgrade our 2.5D maps to fully rendered 3D Digital Twins and integrate Meta Hyperscape for photorealistic volumetric environments. We also aim to expand our library of interactive locations beyond Berlin.
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