Toto's Tours

Inspiration

We were inspired by the recent trips we took abroad that would have benefited from having a portable tour guide. Some of the most compelling experiences during our trips included audio guides and we thought to take that concept a few steps further by transforming it into an immersive AR experience. We were also inspired by the storytelling found in games such as Google Doodle's Champion Island.

What it does

Toto's Tours allows users to have guided AR tours of new places they would like to explore. On these tours, they encounter different NPCs and info boards that provide location-relevant information (history, culture, food recommendations, attractions etc) and also play a part in a larger story/quest with them.

How we built it

Brainstormed concept, characters, story, etc in Figma
Mapped out the chosen neighborhood for the experience and decided on the NPC and storyline that would take place at each key spot
Modeled the characters, textboxes, info boards, and other assets in Blender, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator
Loaded and placed the assets in Adobe Aero
Added animations to each of the assets to bring life to the NPCs and story

Challenges we ran into

Our primary challenge was figuring out the proper Blender exporting settings that were compatible with Adobe Aero. Although Aero supports obj files, our imported objs appeared dull, untextured, and had visual glitches. Ultimately, using fbx files instead of obj files solved this issue.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have created a tourism app concept that stands out from the rest. Instead of simply being a sightseeing app, Toto's Tours focuses on interactive narratives, storytelling, and draws on gaming experiences.

What we learned

This project allowed us to further develop our 3D modeling and UX for XR skills while also learning best practices for building location-based XR experiences.