AR Stories with WebAR for climate protection
With our AR stories, we tell stories in places. Anyone can access them with a smartphone wherever they are – in the city, in parks, in forests or at home – without downloading an app. The browser opens and the AR story goes live.
It’s great fun to test out new forms of storytelling for WebAR. We’re thrilled – and surprised – at how well AR Stories are performing right now. 😊 At the beginning, we were faced with complex tasks and many questions. What story do we want to tell? How can it be implemented for augmented reality? What should the user experience? How should the user feel? Does that work with WebAR?
AR stories are user experiences
In order to find out how we could best build up the AR stories dramaturgically, we combined various methods from film, games and digital communication again and again in such a way that they produced a narrative and at the same time were a story experience for the users. The Design Thinking method was helpful for this. Our testing shows that AR stories work well if they are experienced with others. Based on the lessons learned, we can refine the story mapping model we have developed more and more.
With the AR story about the Polar bear, the platform FUTURE LEAF.space draws attention to climate change
The digital polar bear was virtually placed in a location in Berlin by using WebAR technology. Like in an animationfilm, the 3D polar bear only tells about its living situation at the North Pole through its behaviour and movements. Music enhances his dramatic situation. The users are encouraged to help.
Producing AR stories for WebAR is still technically a challenge. What already works well for IOS – because Apple already has many ready-made solutions for WebAR – does not yet work for Android phones. In addition, not all Android smartphones are capable for AR and the browsers have different requirements. Individual solutions have to be developed here.
Technical solutions for WebAR
In any case, our 3D polar bear was constantly “stuck” to the mobile phone camera of our Android device. Despite many tests – we just couldn’t figure out what the problem was. But our super team found the bugs and fixed them. It was due to the combination of file formats.
Now we have a WebAR tool for our AR stories that works for Android and IOS. However, it is not yet perfect. As long as we don’t have technical standards, it remains the task of ns all to get WebAR working for all smartphones and AR glasses. The safe alternative is also an AR app, which we are building, for example, with the system from our partner Shoutr Labs.
Platforms increasingly integrate WebAR
We publish our AR stories on various platforms, for example on FUTURE LEAF. With the polar bear AR stories, we draw attention to #climatechange. 🌍 We show what you wouldn’t otherwise see, that the polar ice caps are melting and plastic is floating in the Arctic Ocean – both of which are life-threatening for polar bears.
With this we reach mainly young people, but also older people who are curious and want to try AR Stories.
Please give it a try and let us know what you think!
More information and link to this AR story
More platforms for WebAR will follow.
Our great team @Kathe, @Marcus @Eike @Evelina is working on this. Thanks also to our colleague in Hamburg @Florian.
WebAR is an exciting challenge for creatives and developers.
That’s who we are:
We are pimento formate – creative tech for XR edutainment. With our work we help our clients to find new ways of communication. In doing so, we also support them in their sustainability and social responsibility for value-oriented action.
We are looking for testers: hello@pimento-formate.de
Keyword: Tester
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