Hermaton-Enter the Grid

Hermaton is an augmented reality exploration game designed as a large scale spatial installation, which follows from our initial architectural prototype for “Grid”. Although available at table top versions, the premise of this project lies in its capacity to harness augmented reality as a spatial medium which transcends mere visualisation and enters a dialogue between physical and digital space.  The large scale of the installation allows a greater understanding of how augmented reality can affect us at an architectural level and change the way we inhabit and perceive the built environment.

“Hermaton” is centred on the design of a single machine which depicts the laws of the universe, as governed by ancient hermeticism. The game uses a buzz wire maze which users can navigate through, by weaving their device throughout the AR environment and attempting to interact with the digital bulbs of the “Hermaton” machine. As each bulb is switched on, the machine will slowly come to life and reveal the inner workings of this ancient secret. The design of this environment provides both an interactive and performance space which allows the user to fully immerse in a new augmented physical landscape. The AR system is enlarged to occupy an entire room by covering each wall with trackable markers which can be experienced on both Android and ios devices.  The prototype was developed using Vuforia Augmented Reality SDK and Unity3d.

Our quest for the best augmented reality experience has led us to create a game play environment which has potential to be experienced at a variety of scales. A table-top version of the app is available by printing the image marker located on our website (listed below), however our future hopes for the game is to provide this immersive experience in a number of large scale installations.

Our upcoming event will be in San Francisco during Augmented World Expo 2013, where we will debut Hermaton at an amazing 3m by 3m AR installation to allow users to physically navigate through a full scale version of the App. We endeavour to satisfy as many AR enthusiast as possible by striving to enhance our gameplay environment for the optimum AR experience

To find out more about the Hermaton experience please visit the project page.
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