augmented and mixed REALITY

We have over a decade of experience in bringing Augmented Reality (AR) stories to life for a wide range of clients, ranging from The Washington Post to University College London.

An AR experience typically combines your phone's camera view of the real world with overlaid audio, video, maps or 3D animated graphics, using custom triggers, your GPS location or even computer vision to recognise the buildings around you in order to start the experience. 

Unlike many immersive experiences, augmented reality is ideally suited to communal, public experiences, which can be shared simultaneously without the need for additional hardware.

We provide a range of AR production services covering the entire pipeline from story conceptualization to storyboarding, modeling through to execution across a wide range of platforms.

Like what you see? Feel free to contact us to get a quote for creating your own custom AR experience.

We designed and produced University College London's first ever augmented reality campus tour app for the 2024 Festival of Engineering. The app, which is still available for Android and iOS, guides the user around the Bloomsbury campus, showcasing 10 highlights from the Engineering department, from innovations in Sonar to invaluable contributions to the world wide web.

Geo-located points bring animated 3D models to life and feature audio interviews with leading researchers, as well as a selection of photogrammetry scans that were designed to interact with the environment around them. Users were able to take selfies with animated avatars as well as track their progress as they visited all 10 sites on campus. An "At home" version was also built in to allow those who couldn't make it in person to the festival to bring the stories to life on a tabletop at home.

A cutting-edge AR application aimed at integrating computer vision and machine learning techniques into a mobile solution. The goal of the proof of concept was to walk users through the process of taking multiple images from multiple angles of their faces in order to output a 3D photogrammetry mesh. AI prompts were integrated into the solution to advise users when they needed to make adjustments to their angle, lighting, or distance from the camera.

The alpha app was delivered to a diverse population of user testers and their feedback integrated into the final build.

Holoshare was designed and implemented in direct response to the pandemic, when remote video calls became commonplace. We wanted to distinguish our clients' offerings without falling into the trap of monotonous powerpoint presentations that only diverted users' attentions away from the speaker.

Holoshare allows a speaker to maintain direct eye contact with their audience while empowering them to embed 3D content, video or static images directly inside the most popular VOIP services such as Zoom, Teams or Skype. It only requires a simple piece of software installation on the part of the presenter - audiences simply tune into their video call as they would normally.

Holoshare incorporates face tracking via computer vision and allows users to tell immersive stories without the need for a headset.

In 1967, the photographer Gordon Parks, shot “A Harlem Family” for Life magazine. This series of photographs would form some of his most significant images, set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement. 50 years later, little has changed.

Looking beyond the outcomes of conflict, police shootings and social stereotyping, this project will address the context for violence, introducing a viewer to a world of monotony, limited opportunity, and social stigma,mapping the spaces with a combination of 3D scans, Parks’ original photos, and 360 video.

Produced in partnership with Magnum photographer Harriet Dedman and the Gordon Parks foundation using Matterport’s state-of-the-art 3D scanner. Exhibited at The Gordon Parks Foundation in Pleasantville, NYC.

We partnered with Positive Negatives and the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) in London to give a new angle to comics telling refugees' experiences as they fled conflict and violence in their homelands.

Using ARc Stories, visitors to the exhibition were able to watch animated and live-action videos of the same stories as the artwork they aimed their smartphones at, adding a new layer of interactivity to the exhibition.

Read more here.

A cutting-edge hardware prototype designed from the ground up integrating micro-sensors, conductive materials and a custom algorithim to detect the angle, speed, depth and positioning of a real syringe when injecting five sensitive areas on the face.

Built for the Hololens 2, the device presented a layered, full rigged and animated series of avatar faces on top of a latex model that gave mixed reality users the chance to render certain layers invisible (shown left) in order to better understand and accomplish their goal.  Never before has real-world hardware as delicate as a syringe been paired with a cutting-edge mixed reality headset to provide users with sub-millimetre accuracy and real-time feedback.

We used ARc Stories to guide users directly to our 360 videos of survivor testimonies of the Colombian conflict during our exhibition at the Center for Peace and Reconciliation in Bogota, Colombia. By aiming their smartphones at drawn portraits of those involved, users were taken directly to the video of that interviewee, seamlessly linking the drawn medium to the digital.

To see a demo of this AR-enabled VR viewer, click here.

To read more about the exhibition and its use of VR and AR here.

For The Washington Post, we created a walkthrough of the events preceding Freddie Gray's death after his arrest in Baltimore, Maryland on April 19, 2015. Using 3D models, audio, maps, court documents and witness testimony, users can better understand the complexities of the case and the disparities in the cases presented by the prosecution and defense in relation to Grey’s death.

The piece is narrated by Post local reporter Lynh Bui and was the first use of AR to report on a trial, published in May 2016. Read more here.