Xuan Zhu MSc Dissertation 2015/16

Augmented Reality in the Diamond

Supervised by S.Maddock

Abstract

Augmented Reality (AR) has gradually become popular and entered people's daily lives gradually. Especially in some entertainment fields, some games and applications are made in AR technology. This technology is where images are overlaid onto a mobile phone screen when the phone's camera is pointing at something in the real world.

The main objective of this project is to implement a treasure hunt game on smartphones  with AR technology to help new students become familiar with the different areas of the Diamond building. Some of the history of the University of Sheffield will be shown in form of texts for messages, images for figures and buildings, videos for events and architecture, 3D models for arts and animations for scenes in the game. The game had 8 target places distributed from the Basement to the Fourth floor with history, clues, hints and virtual objects mentioned above. A friendly GUI interface, virtual buttons and a website had been implemented to support the game. The game was tested in Unity and iPhones . There were 12 students who took part in the testing. Most of them enjoyed the game and considered the game was easy to be control.