Augmented Reality Gameboard

Here is some fun work I’ve been toying with in the office when we were hosting an Augmented Reality (AR) STEM demonstration for some High School students but can’t show off the R&D IP.

This was a pretty quick effort using the Microsoft Hololens (v2). I grabbed some famous NYC buildings and then made a few geographical embellishments to fit the board from SketchUp’s Open Source building library. Ultimately, the effort for just placing the AR assets and getting this to render in the Hololens was about 4 hours.

Adding a little more challenge, I attempted to add game pieces. I started making paper tokens expecting that the image recognition in Microsoft Hololens could replace token with a hotel or house, with no luck. Problem being the SDK did not allow for repeat use of an image. As a work around I made unique backgrounds to the tokens so that the Hololens could work as intended. The problem still being is what does this solve? We’re pushing paper versus a tactile house or hotel?

I often struggle with where AR can enhance an experience or remove interactions that we as human appreciate like to be able to touch and feel a product versus just waving our hand into thin air. To that point, the hotels and houses felt contrived of not at the least to basic in attempt/implementation. So I dropped them. Another coworker added a circulating helicopter and the kids loved it. Good enough.