XR immersive experiences firm Trigger XR has teamed up with the Global Telco Alliance and South Korea’s LG Uplus to launch its Dinotracker augmented reality (AR) app to commemorate the release of Jurassic World: Dominion, the company announced on Tuesday.
Leveraging Niantic’s Lightship AR development kit (ARDK), the firm has created an engaging immersive experience to celebrate the movie’s release, allowing enthusiasts of the hit franchise to explore AR dinosaurs with real-time 3D, lifelike visualisations and immersive storytelling.
Trigger XR also partnered with Universal Pictures, Qualcomm Technologies and the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) in South Korea to develop the AR-powered adventure.
Following similar developments from the film, humans and dinosaurs coexist globally and gamers are tasked with sighting the reptilian neighbours while documenting them with reports and notifications via the app’s scanning technologies.
The experience features some of the most popular dinosaurs from the movie, including adult and baby velociraptors, massive carnotauruses, and the king of the Kingdom, Tyrannosaurus Rex, among others.
Jason Yim, Founder and Chief Executive of Trigger XR, said,
“Our goal for the Dinotracker AR app was to create the most realistic experience possible, enabling fans to feel like these incredible creatures are in front of them and immersed in their surroundings. We’re excited to bring in the latest XR tech from Niantic and combine it with one of the world’s most beloved series”
Jurassic World Meets the Immersive World
Niantic’s Lightship ARDK scans surfaces for key experience settings to generate RT3D content in real-time, allowing digital Pteranodons to fly and Dilophosauruses to graze in physical grasslands.
The app also leverages spatial awareness and occlusion technologies to generate depth information, where users can create context for interactive content to appear behind objects, walls, and other items.
Users can tap the game’s hand-tracking features to feed dinosaurs in real-time and take photos with the virtual creatures via Apple Core machine learning (ML) in iOS and Google’s MediaPipe on Android.
The app also generates walkable planes indicated by 3D mesh representations of surroundings in a user’s environment, where dinosaurs can navigate physical locations. Users can even point lasers at dinosaurs to attract some of the species in the game.
It also incorporates realistic interactions with dinosaurs and reactive animations using high-fidelity 3D modelling, behaviours, and audiovisual content. Dinosaurs will snap at or flee from users when the latter gets too close.
Users contribute to the content by tracking dinosaurs across the game’s web-based Dinotracker map to build a community of dino-hunters to explore the Jurassic characters outdoors, share videos and photos, and interact on social media via the #dinotracker and #JurassicWorldDominion hashtags.
AR the Future of Gaming?
The news comes just months after Trigger XR released a joint effort experience with the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) to launch a League Safari Par-Tee mobile app for young golfing enthusiasts, allowing collaborative, real-time gaming competitions in physical locations.
Check out this @lenslist article where our software engineers Brandon Wade and Blake Lawton dive into how you can create a similar project like the PGA Jr. League Safari Par-Tee App for the Templates Challenge.
➡️ Read here: https://t.co/Twdrzccfbo#Metaverse #XR @NianticLabs pic.twitter.com/Fdrj1jIYBI
— Trigger XR (@TriggerGlobal) July 13, 2022
AR developers have widely used Niantic’s Lightship ARDK platform to build immersive, interactive experiences, leading to the release of Pokemon Go, arguably one of the most successful augmented gaming titles in history.
AR gaming platform Izumi World also opened a novel gaming bundle, where users can catch, train, and fight digital Izumi creatures roaming physical environments worldwide while earning non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as prizes.
