Big Blue Ceiling

Virtual Eddie

A life-size mixed reality avatar, placed and tracked with recognition targets.

Eddie OffermannConcept and development

Role
Concept and development
Areas
XR, Apps, Computer Vision
A game-style 3D avatar of a bearded man in a navy captain's hat and dark jacket, standing in front of a patterned screen.

Virtual Eddie is a mixed reality experiment in putting a character into a real space convincingly. Recognition targets give large-scale positional tracking for the elements of the scene, so a virtual figure can hold its place in a room as you move around it.

The figure is a game-character-style avatar modeled on me. The likeness is a stand-in: in practice the same setup could be a virtual assistant that tells you about a product or service, or a guide that provides training and help to users.

Like the rest of this work, it runs on Android and iOS devices with no special sensors.

Part of our mobile XR R&D.

  • Play video: Virtual Eddie, demo 1
    The avatar placed in a real room, tracked at large scale from recognition targets.
  • Play video: Virtual Eddie, demo 2
    A second take on the same mixed reality setup.
  • A game-style character in a captain hat walking across a real floor in AR
  • Close view of the captain-hat character in AR
  • A tablet showing the captain-hat character standing in the room
  • Captured on the tablet
  • A realistic character in a flat cap and pink shirt rendered in Unity
    A realistic character study in Unity
  • Close-up of the flat-cap character face
  • Extreme close-up of the character eyes
  • The flat-cap character inside the Unity editor
  • Realtime character render

Sources

  • AR Scuba

    An underwater 360 video performed as a hologram.

    • XR
    • Apps
    • Computer Vision

  • Augmented Clothing

    Clothing as a platform for augmented reality, starting with hats.

    • XR
    • Apps
    • Computer Vision

  • Cardforia and SecureVR

    Unity building blocks for phone-based AR and VR.

    • XR
    • Tools
    • Apps
    • Computer Vision

  • iOS LiDAR Scanner

    3D scanning and surface reconstruction on LiDAR-equipped iPhones and iPads.

    • XR
    • Computer Vision
    • Apps
    • VFX