Inspiration
Since the emergence of COVID-19, venues have shut down and world population has been sequestered in-home. Thus, one of the hallmark use cases of live entertainment and immersive experience has been temporarily shelved. As the population returns to a new normal, people are eagerly awaiting attending these types of events and this use case regains its relevance.
As of April 30, Disneyland reopened its doors. As we slowly return to live events, it will be more important than ever for stadium owners, franchises, and festivals to collaborate to offer an enhanced experience. Next-generation 5G networks can help them connect in new ways so attendees become more than just passive spectators.
Today, everyone can share video live on social media; however, thousands of users doing it concurrently at a concert or game often overloads the network.
The ability to offer digitally enhanced experiences is critical as venues look to attract and retain fans, attendees members and concert-goers. But by keeping the attendee in focus, and creating ways to individualize and expand what it means to attend an event, owners and event planners can continue innovating on what it means to be an attendee
What we propose with bazaar is a solution and package specifically for events, concerts, venues, festivals, pop-up retail experiences.
What it does
This initial prototype is a multiplayer experience that allows players to roll a virtual die then navigate to an image target. Once the player scans an image target they engage in a multiplayer game with another user.
How we built it
Development
The experience was developed in the Unity Editor using the AR Foundation library. ARFoundation is a cross-platform solution to building mobile AR experiences. For networking, instead of a common package called 'Photon' we instead used a new a Unity Package called "Normcore" by Normal VR which employs Azure for network handling.
We also implemented basic and game logic scripts inside the Unity Editor
Design
To create the 3D game assets, we used Blender 3D and rendered using Eevee; 2D Assets (Image Markers and UI elements) were primarily created in Adobe Illustrator
The game assets are as follows
- 'GO' sign spawning at the onset of the experience
- 3 Characters (Representing Player Avatars)
- 2 Player Game Maze
- Game Dice (with iconography on each of the faces)
- Image Targets
- UI Sprite Sheet for Player Movement
Challenges we ran into
We learned to integrate the Normcore package successfully into a Unity project to deploy the augmented reality multiplayer networks. Most of the existing prototypes with Normcore have been for virtual reality due to Normcore's absence of spatial anchors. However we worked around this constraint in our design by using image targets as spatial anchors.
What we learned
As a small team, we learned time managements and how to and not to effectively communicate. We also learned the importance of continually checking in with organizers (supervisors) to ensure all instructions and deadline were specifically met.
What's next for
We had a delightful experience mainly in considering the logistics of how it would be implemented. Ideally "Bazaar" would exist as a service for clients like Coachella, SXSW, Lolapalooza, etc.
There is the potential to submit to a T-Mobile accelerator since there is a clear need by outdoor entertainment and venues for these types of experiences. We both have experience in augmented reality and are aware of the common use cases, what is lacking in the industry, and the state of current development tools.
There is currently no standard tool for companies and venues to rapidly create location-based AR experiences.
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