By: Lauri Rustanius
Lauri Rustanius is a professional skater turned AR game designer out of Helsinki, Finland. Lauri tells us how he’s using real world data to drive AR game content. He’ll be sharing several posts on our publication about his upcoming projects, so stay tuned.
At GeneRealAR we’re using the Mapbox Unity SDK to push the boundaries of AR gameplay and mixed reality environments. Here’s a virtual portal we placed in the middle of one of Helsinki’s popular squares:
Huh, did you say portals? #ARKit https://t.co/EZ7L89l1F2
I thought that mixing first person elements with ARKit would be cool and even cooler would be a transition from AR to VR. This type of content is exciting because it adds a new layer of experience to the real world, but I felt like there’s more that could be done. I wanted to be able to walk next to objects that spawn in front of me instead of having to manually place them.
This is where the location data comes in. If you wanted to place portals in multiple cities across the globe, where would you put them? Using Mapbox you get access to a lot of data that you can use to place objects anywhere you can think of based on their real-world location. The Mapbox ARKit build by David Rhodes is amazing and saves the hassle of developing your own global tracking with ARKit so you can just start creating.
For example, using POI’s and park info from Mapbox data, we can populate a park with characters, flowers, buildings— you name it. The most amazing experience is when you walk up to an AR object that just seems like it was meant to be there. It creates a sense of concreteness, anchoring you in the real world.
In the park in Helsenki, I placed treasure chests guarded by sword yielding skeletons.
Using a global map dataset, you can generate any kind of content procedurally that covers the entire world. We used park data to get paths within a park and then utilizing Nav Mesh Agents we actually have the skeletons walk across the walkways within parks. How crazy is that?
Also with relatively easy scripting, you can setup some game logic so that the skeletons attack the player. I don’t think they like you looting their graveyard!
It's actually more fun to slay skeletons in the evening 🤙 #ARKit #Mapbox https://t.co/JdQsnfKMAF
At this point we are only scratching the surface of what’s possible. Machine learning, image detection, and natural language processing (NLP) combined with AR capable devices and accurate GPS are what’s shaping the future of mixed reality. We are slowly moving away from screens to location based experiences tied to real life objects.
Keep watching this blog. I’ll be following up with a deep dive on how to set up this project and how to utilize geospatial data to create believable AR games. To get started, explore the Mapbox ARKit library for Unity or begin with this basic mesh generation tutorial.
If you want to talk about the future of AR, both Mapbox and I will be at Unite Austin, October 3–5, or hit me up on Twitter.
lauri (＾ｰ^)ノ (@lingoded) | Twitter
Placing AR portals across the real world was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.