AR Mixtory
- Story
- History
- Mystery
“ARENA” is a multi-platform VR/AR/XR authoring tool developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Wiselab. ARENA’s development aims to emphasize user experience design in mixed-reality storytelling by providing tools that allow users to interact with content. In this project, our team will contribute to designing and developing a mixed-reality interactive environment using ARENA.
With ARENA’s features, the goal of our interactive environment would be to emphasize users’ connections with the scene. To achieve this goal, we took inspiration from old Chinatown in Pittsburgh. Our team will memorialize its legendary background story to recreate the scene of Pittsburgh’s Chinatown 100 years ago on the ARENA platform. Since ARENA can provide simple user interactions such as moving and tapping, our scene will be displayed as an exploration tour with storylines. Tasks can be activated based on users’ actions. Follow us on this tour and unveil the mysteries of Pittsburgh Chinatown.
Project Instructors: Scott Stevens, Mike Christel
Project SME: Shirley Yee
Project consultant: John Dessler
Our Client
Anthony Rowe, Professor, CMU Electrical and Computer Engineering, WiSELab
Including research programmers: Michael Farb, John Choi, Ivan Liang
ARENA
ARENA is an open source, collaborative, web-based, multi-platform VR/AR/XR authoring tool developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s WiSELab. Recent updates to the platform have brought significant improvements to the user experience and a new depth of interactivity to content.
One of the ARENA team’s major areas of focus is improving the platform’s usefulness as a tool for augmented and mixed reality storytelling. To this end, the team created a robust user interface tool allowing users to interact with content in novel ways and developed a real-time volumetric capture system enabling telepresence so distant users can “walk next to” one another through a shared virtual world.
The ETC student team will create a robust virtual/augmented/mixed reality environment using ARENA that makes use of the newest features of the platform. The team may use models from the Smithsonian Institution’s 3D Digitization Collections. The collection contains thousands of models such as a rare coin from Yuan Qian, China, 290 BCE, Andrew Carnegie’s mansion (exterior and interior), the 1903 Wright Flyer, and the Space Shuttle, Discovery. The students can also utilize high-end photogrammetry equipment to create digital artifacts of their own for use in the project. With these tools and assets, the team will create an experience that is historically significant, beautiful, and compelling.
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