The Metaverse Park
How can we blur the line between digital and physical reality?
This was the question we asked ourselves once Niantic invited us to be a part of their Lightship Global Jam. Using their new SDK, we created an augmented reality experience for the wonderful Zrinjevac Park in Zagreb. With the Lightship meshing system, we were able to build an experience in which you can interact fully with your environment. With this experience, digital objects completely and realistically respond to the real world.
Next, we created a digital inversion of the park for desktop and virtual reality. Everything real in the virtual world is digital in the real world and vice versa. Think of it like an upside-down digital twin.
By connecting these two experiences, whatever affects the real world also affects the virtual world, and anything that happens in the virtual one affects the real world too.
This was great on its own, but to complete the experience, we just had to add people. By using the Lightship multiplayer system, you can now have a shared augmented reality experience in the exact location. But it can do even more than that. Someone in the real world using augmented reality can interact with someone in the virtual world as if they were in the same place.
This allowed us to create a unique experience where the physical and virtual worlds merged together, and people could interact and communicate in innovative ways.
