Welcome, Operative, to F.A.B.L.E. – aka the Federated Association of Believers, Leaders, and Explorers. Your mission is simple: teleport on board this foreign spaceship and connect with the alien. As you explore this new world, there are protocols to follow. Make sure you check in with the alien as you go, follow the principles of consent, and achieve a two-way flow of information that will benefit both of our races.
Commissioned by MOD., Monkeystack set about creating an AR triggered app-based experience inspired by early 90s game graphics that is played by moving through the room. The experience can best be described as Barbarella meets the Muppets!
Featuring 6 interactive stations including 3 mini games, visitors to MOD. are guided through the experience via an app on their phone using AR marker recognition and BLE beacons installed throughout the exhibit. The app and interactives all communicate to an offsite database which changes conditions and the user journeys of each unique visitor based on how many people are in the room, leading to a rewarding experience for all
The result is an application which uses an iPhone or iPad to reveal sound and vision not present in real life.
A unique artwork was created for each composition that acts as an AR marker, and even when the marker is not in sight the audio continues to play providing the user with a portable way to remain engaged with the application.
Monkeystack was brought onboard to populate highly detailed, photogrammetrically created scenes with believable soldiers with the final product processed to work in a real-time VR environment.
First, we tackled character modelling to create a set of believable CG soldiers using captures of the original uniforms, hats, backpacks and boots, bringing the soldiers to life with realistic, real-time animated actions. By using a mix of motion capture for more generic movements and hand keyed animations for more specific actions, we streamlined the animation process while still delivering a quality outcome suitable for VR. We then processed complex photogrammetry assets to recreate realistic, real-time CG representations of the battle fields from 1942.
There was significant volume of processing work required to optimise the scenes as the photogrammetry assets ran in the hundreds of millions of polygons and needed to be significantly reduced to run in a real-time environment. The final result is an immersive and powerful educational in both a VR and AR App experience.
The viewer is placed within a highly detailed apartment, complete with cinematic lighting and sound design, where they can move within the environment and interact with a series of objects.
This approach to building interactive worlds in XR is one that we are constantly refining and employing within other VR projects. From an industry training and education perspective, we want to enable people to better navigate environments and objects and familiarise themselves with their function or specification while in an immersive, low-risk environment.