Large scale interaction
Uopia is an art installation in the form of an interactive immersive space, exhibited during 4 days during the light festival of Brussels at the museum of history and art. An expected general audience including kids and family. There was two days to install the whole AV system and content.
Technical setup
Size of the space : 30m x 10m x 6m
Interactive floor : 20m x 10m (sensors at 6m high) (200m2)
Interactive wall : 20m x 6m
Videoprojectors : Barco
Videomapping : Made with Vioso
Interactivity : 1x Augmenta Pro8 server + 6x Sick Visionary T-mini
Content software : Unity (floor) and TouchDesigner (wall)
Augmenta technical study
The cameras were positioned on the side and in such a way as to capture the full height of people near the screens, using their height data to create interactivity on the screens.
Augmenta provides the following key features :
- Dedicated hardware and sensors + fast calibration process
- Multiple outputs (one for Unity with a Unity presets, one for TouchDesigner with a TD presets)
- Bounding box using people’s height for interactivity with the wall
- Position tracking for people for floor interaction
- Prediction for running people
- Tunings and filters to include children
How fast is Augmenta
With our highly efficient prediction algorithm, latency is no longer an issue. We developed Augmenta tracking technology in order to give you the best tools to build the smoothest real-time interactive experience. The smoothness and prediction tuning capabilities enabled the possibility of having people and children running throughout the entire space, as shown in the video.
Content
A last-minute decision was made to use Unity for the floor and TouchDesigner for the wall, due to the high number of projects and the availability of the team at Théoriz studio.
Augmenta allowed for a hassle-free switch between the two tools through its Unity and TouchDesigner plugins, making the last-minute decision seamless. Vioso also contributed to the ease of integration with its Unity and TouchDesigner plugins for warping and blending, which were simple to use.
The technical setup was quite simple, allowing for a quick installation. Only three servers were needed (Augmenta + TouchDesigner + Unity), connected together with a standard switch.
Interactive design
Two clever concepts were applied here :
- Using data from people tracking to make the wall interactive (without adding sensors).Budget constraints don’t always allow for sensors on both the wall and floor. In this case, the height data of people, collected by sensors tracking the floor, was used to create visual portals when people approached the walls. Based on the people’s position (near the wall) and their height, these visual portals were generated on the wall
- Adapting the visual effects on the floor depending on the number of people.The “number of people” data provided by Augmenta was used to create a floor effect that appeared larger and took up more space visually when there were only a few people in the space. As the crowd density increased, the visual effect became smaller. The result was that the floor interaction remained engaging and playful, regardless of the number of people in the space.
A few people : wide effect
A lot of people : small effect
Conclusion
In this project, Augmenta facilitated :
- A very quick setup for a 200m² interactive space
- An effortless switch, even with last-minute content decisions
- The ability for the content team to simulate everything beforehand
- A robust system that can handle 200+ people simultaneously, including running children
