XR Hackathon II 25th February 2019

Hello again. We are running another Hackathon. Same place. Other time. We especially want to encourage Berlin-based journalists to join the ride: February 25th, 2019, 10 am. Medieninnovationszentrum Babelsberg, Stahnsdorfer Str. 107, 14482 Potsdam. Bring your laptop. We provide food and drinks. And do not forget to write a mail to Marcus in order to join. The event is free as in coffee.

And here is what we want to achieve: Building up on a fruitful brainstorming and very first implementations last time, we identified three major areas of interests plus one little thingy.

Beam me up, Scotty

We want to further delve into the chances and possibilities of using XR in the context of learning and knowledge transfer. And we want to figure out where using VR/AR/XR makes more sense compared to traditional forms of storytelling. VR can very quickly take you to places you normally could not go to. Let´s say the middle of the human body, the moon or a pyramid.

Our web-based framework lets you beam a user from one space to another. Or to be more precise here: From one sphere to another by for instance touching an object. So we could borrow a 3d model from Sketchfab or Poly (CC licence) like an ancient object, put that object in an empty space where you or your user could examine it by literally moving around it in the experience. By touching it, the sphere around you would change and for instance take you to ancient Greece. A personal interactive 3D cgi experience.

Time Travel

Another thing we would love to explore is putting layers of visual information on one another. Think of several 360 spheres taken from exactly the same spot but in various years. By implementing a simple slider you could “move in time”. Something similar is possible with Google Earth. But we think that it is not yet thought through. We have seen some crazy Mixed Reality demos on Twitter from a guy augmenting his room with an older image of exactly this room, but we want to dig deeper here.

Walking Knowledge – Spatial Storytelling

A very simple approach for non-coders could be to add textual information in a 3d space. Just think of a web-based data visualisation where you learn everything about a 100 meter sprint (Olympics or elsewhere) by just moving along a digital sports field. Walking is the new scrolling @Grahaphics said about AR. With XR Dok you can very easily build a VR version of that.

BER – Do i need to say more

Berlin is going to have a new airport. So they say. It has been a while. And it will certainly take more time. Before this building will ever open, we bring a digital 3d version of it to play around with it in VR. If the model will be done by February 25th that is.

Of course we are more than happy to discuss and/or prototype your idea. And please do not worry if code is not your friend. Our tool is aimed at journalists who know that HTML is an abbreviation but struggle to make use of the rest in their daily lives. Welcome to the club!

Information

When? February 25th, 2019, 10 am. Where? Medieninnovationszentrum Babelsberg, Stahnsdorfer Str. 107, 14482 Potsdam. Bring your laptop. We provide food and drinks. What? Do not forget to write a mail to Marcus in order to join. The event is free as in coffee.

XRDOK is an open source XR toolkit for CGI-based content production. It lets users combine 3d objects (gltf) with actions (components) in scenes (VR, later AR) easily in order to tell stories or explain things.

Vragments is a Berlin-based AR/VR studio. We are programmers, journalists and designers who focus on innovative technologies. We help you get your projects out.