All case studies

Lonelight

An In-House Augmented Reality Horror Escape Room

Project

UMD New Works Incubator

Role:

AR Development, 3D Modeling, Animation, UI.UX

ExhIbitions:

Halloween Exhibition, Brendan Iribe Center 2021

Team:

Mahum Qadeer, Aishwarya Tare

Synopsis

Lonelight is a 10-minute AR horror escape room where the user investigates a haunted house. They are tasked with helping Annie find her missing family members by using the spiritual lens (android tablet). Users spend their time solving clues by decoding morse codes, finding hidden riddles in articles, and using photographs to piece together information to be able to escape the room. All clues are triggered by AR image/object tracking.

Research

Watched horror movies and played other AR escape rooms and horror experiences.

Studied game design fundamentals

Heavily researched Unity features and tutorials. Focusing on AR Foundation/Core, Event Systems, UI Input, Triggered Colliders, Accurate Anchor Placement, and more

I experimented with a lot of open-source sample AR projects and closely studied their technical and design framework.

Prototype Phases

05/18/21

Prototype I Developed
College Park, MD

Demo Video

Designed to be a remote AR experience

AR Plane Detection/Raycasting Set-up
Models and animations spawn on designated planes
Event system to establish a linear set of animations, UI notifications, and sounds

09/15/21

Alpha Test

The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center

Article Link

Designed to be an In-House AR experience @The Clarice Center for the Arts

Strong Narrative and User Journey
Interactive Clues (Visual, Audio, and Physical)
Image/Object targets Implemented
Tested on 20+ individuals prior to debut
Set design created with the help of the resources of the Clarice Center and Staff
Opening weekend sold over 200 tickets

Halloween Debut 10/27/21

GA Release

Brendan Iribe Computer Science Center

Interview

@ The Brendan Iribe Computer Science Center

Narrative changed to implement more user interaction to solving the mystery
- Used NextNow’s exhibit feedback to modify the player’s experience and journey
Use of local anchors and Microsoft Azure Spatial Cloud Anchors
Layered sounds to envelope the player to slowly become hyper-aware of the noise
For marketing purposes and establishing the mood, the room’s glass doorways were decorated with spiderwebs, bloody decals, pumpkins, and candy!
UI input system for players to answer questions with their clues

Features

Object/Image Tracking

Spatial Cloud Anchors, Microsoft Azure

Animation Rigging

Easier to transition from physical world to virtual world

Collider Triggers to spawn models and animations

Challenges

Build Errors

SDK Errors

Event System kept crashing
Testing Results:
- App wouldn’t build
- App would crash mid-play
- Some files would break, corrupting the rest of the build
- Event System was too complicated to implement accurately

User Experience

5 large exhibits, but lack of context with navigation causes people to skim/skip over significant artifacts.

Large Project, Small Group

Many of the placards are written in English. This prevents those unable to speak English/those with limited schooling to miss out on key information.

Build Errors

SDK Errors

Event System kept crashing
Testing Results:
- App wouldn’t build
- App would crash mid-play
- Some files would break, corrupting the rest of the build
- Event System was too complicated to implement accurately

User Experience

5 large exhibits, but lack of context with navigation causes people to skim/skip over significant artifacts.

Large Project, Small Group

Many of the placards are written in English. This prevents those unable to speak English/those with limited schooling to miss out on key information.

Build Errors

SDK Errors

Event System kept crashing
Testing Results:
- App wouldn’t build
- App would crash mid-play
- Some files would break, corrupting the rest of the build
- Event System was too complicated to implement accurately

User Experience

5 large exhibits, but lack of context with navigation causes people to skim/skip over significant artifacts.

Large Project, Small Group

Many of the placards are written in English. This prevents those unable to speak English/those with limited schooling to miss out on key information.

Solutions

Build Errors

Only working in one computer
Removed the Event System
Rebuilt project from scratch a few times
Built a stronger foundation as time progressed

User Experience

5 large exhibits, but lack of context with navigation causes people to skim/skip over significant artifacts.

Large Project, Small Group

Many of the placards are written in English. This prevents those unable to speak English/those with limited schooling to miss out on key information.

Build Errors

Only working in one computer
Removed the Event System
Rebuilt project from scratch a few times
Built a stronger foundation as time progressed

User Experience

5 large exhibits, but lack of context with navigation causes people to skim/skip over significant artifacts.

Large Project, Small Group

Many of the placards are written in English. This prevents those unable to speak English/those with limited schooling to miss out on key information.

Build Errors

Only working in one computer
Removed the Event System
Rebuilt project from scratch a few times
Built a stronger foundation as time progressed

User Experience

5 large exhibits, but lack of context with navigation causes people to skim/skip over significant artifacts.

Large Project, Small Group

Many of the placards are written in English. This prevents those unable to speak English/those with limited schooling to miss out on key information.