Guests at amusement locations can soon enjoy augmented reality (AR) personal tours with some of their favorite characters. Now, amusement park characters can guide visitors across different rides with the aid of mobile-based AR technology, and even prompt them about important attractions.
Nexus Studios, a company based out of Los Angeles and London, has been putting in efforts to introduce AR to entertainment locations for two years now. Nexus has launched its first open demonstration of its AR technology in Dallas. It converted the AT&T Stadium into a huge podium to demonstrate its location-centric AR visualisations.
Nexus entered into a partnership with AT&T and Samsung to launch the football-themed AR experience, with the help of location technology company Scape Technologies. The experience is available to the users of 5G-capable Samsung phones, who can click AR selfies with their icons, stream large Dallas Cowboys players’ holograms, and gain access to live AR stats and scoreboards during the game. Participants will also be able to play an augmented reality game where Cowboys players confront robots during half-time periods.
The technology behind augmented reality filters and overlays are nothing new because target audiences are familiar with games like Pokemon GO. But, Nexus Studios did not want the holograms of the Dallas Cowboys to appear at random places in the stadium. It wanted to ascertain that the virtual players were up to their current scale, so that they could perform interactions with objects around them.
The concept was to enable the AR characters to stay behind doors, balconies and roofs. The key idea is to let AR function in accordance to real-world physical dimensions. – Luke Ritchie, the head of XR and interactive arts at Nexus Studios
The stadium was scanned and reconstructed as a virtual model. Nexus used the visual positioning system of Scape to identify the location of all stadium visitors, with respect to the objects surrounding them. Achieving this was instrumental in allowing the experiences created by AT&T and Samsung.
Yet, Nexus did not want its association with the stadium to be a one-time project. Chris O’Reilly, the executive creative director and co-founder of Nexus, spoke to Variety magazine, remarking that the idea was to make the complete venue AR-ready. He added that the developers are aware of various building details.
Details of the building can be utilised in the future to design different AR experiences within the same location. Consumers may also choose to select from multiple AR experiences and information layers to tailor their stadium touring experience.
Nexus has created a platform named Gilda for offering location-driven augmented reality experiences. O’Reilly emphasised that this platform is capable of using several positioning technologies to exhibit AR experiences at venues like theme parks and stadiums. He stressed the need for different visual positioning systems at different locations.
Powered by 5G, the AR development is set to deliver stunning AR experiences to visitors.