HERE-R

Here-R is a series of events held in Taipei city, using AR to give people an opportunity to experience interesting parts of the city in a new way. Unlike most other AR experiences, Here-R (華山-R and 四維-R so far) is place-specific. This means each site is researched and measured so that all the graphic and spatial elements within the AR world match the features of the real world (for example walls, windows, corners, furniture, etc.)

Each event is a game comprised of a number of scenes. In each scene players needs to find Xiao Feiou (小非歐, short for non-euclidean), a multidimensional dog who could be hiding on top of a tree, behind a bench, etc. There are special tools and clues within each scene to lure Xiao Feiou from his hiding place and make him give you a code to find the next level.

Here-R makes extensive use of on-site QR codes for geo-referencing and also QR codes that appear in the game (as part of the AR scene), which forces players to play with friends or get help from strangers to unlock the clues together. Here-R events are mainly one-off experiences, played during the course of a few hours. Every time an instance of Xiao Feiou is found a "crypto cookie" is released and a collective score is updated, so at the end of the session the crypto cookies are counted with the hope that there enough funds collected to send Xiao Feiou back home.

Technical Note: All Here-R games were developed with Unity, Playmaker and Blender and distributed through the Styly platform. 華山-R employs Styly's geolocation QR codes while 四維-R uses a regular QR code + a physical alignment marker to match the real and AR worlds. There is a simple SQL/PHP backend that keeps track of the scores during sessions.

Please note that this is a site-specific work, each scene only makes sense in one single place in the world ◤