Experience being inside a tornado. Interactive street-scape ad, promoting Discovery’s show, Storm Chasers.
Large interactive screen, installed in two location at the heart on New-York city, gave pedestrian a taste of what it would be like to get caught in a massive tornado storm in the city. Standing in front of the big screen, seeing a reflection of yourself in an NYC environment, the application displayed the scenery under a tornado attack, with flying debris and a huge tornado funnel that engulf the whole screen.
The installation integrated cinematic special effects, composed in real time by an augmented reality application. It had site specific calibration to the architectural environment, Alongside motion tracking and background subtraction. This allowed the tornado to be composed on screen in relation to perspective depth. The computer also controlled two industrial grade blowers. As the tornado approached the blowers escalated in speed, pulsating left to right to create a whirling wind feeling.
This project was an interesting opportunity to create animated visual effects, into the context of a real time interactive experience. Achieving modularity by creating multiple layers of animated objects, and integrating them as live elements into the augmented reality code.
At the end of the storm, users were presented with the option to get a link to their photo, inside the tornado, via text message. Many opted to get the photos and uploaded them to facebook in large numbers. It was a great to see many users getting creative and playful with the tornado, posing multiple times with friends, and even babies, acting as if almost blown by the wind.
Produced by Inwindow Outdoor
Storm Chasers site test
