Making AR Enjoyable

MARE was a really neat project. We had 360 video captures and we wanted to provide an augmented reality overlay to compliment what was being displayed. MARE was a tool that provided tools for both rendering and authoring these augmented layers.

The AR worked by rendering the video onto the inside of a sphere, projecting the flat image into the appropriate proportions. MARE then provided a persistent and relative content layer. The persistent layer maintained its position relative to the user, acting as a sort of heads up display. The relative layer was tied to elements in the video, and elements on this layer could go out of view as the user panned their head.

The AR author was able to walk through the video, placing elements in the environment to track key points of interest or provide additional context. We also explored computer vision algorithms for feature detection to enable automatic tracking of key elements in the video. With this relatively simple set of tools we were able to annotate videos, for instance following a landmark as Robbie drove by it, and give the viewer a deeper experience beyond just the visual media.