We all went through that phase as kids where we wished we could transport ourselves to another place in another time—a chance to walk among dinosaurs, perhaps.
Partners Farhad and Faraz Shababi relived this moment as adults when visiting an exhibition about King Tut of Egypt in 2022 conducted by National Geography. Only it dawned on them that, with modern technologies such as augmented reality, the dream of an exhibition as “immersive” as the one we imagined in our childhood could just prove itself to be in mixed-reality.
“We both knew that Augmented Reality could have had a monumental impact on this experience if it had been a part of it,” the Vancouver-based pair said of the Tut exhibition. Thus, “We decided to bring King Tut’s story into AR with the intention of having both fun and educational aspects for people to see what the discovery of the tomb might have been like in a physical sense.”
Through tech, the founders of virtual production house Bad Decisions Studio wanted to create an “identical twin of the physical tomb discovered in Egypt and allow people to solve puzzles to uncover the location of the coffin and be present in it from the comfort of their home.”
“The tomb section is the exact replica of the real-life location and the user can walk in it just as is he/she is in Egypt,” says Shababi.
Their work, “The Mystery of King Tut: An Adventure Through Time,” recently competed against 3,000 developers worldwide to the GOLD Third Place prize—valued at US$20,000—during Snapchat’s annual “Build the Future Lensathon” competition.
The developers believe their AR experience “is not only able to create an engaging experience and capture attention, but it is also able to educate users in an entertaining and fun way and build brand awareness.”
Consequently they can see many applications beyond King Tut, while also pointing to several possible use cases within the National Geographic band alone, as one obvious example.
“This type of lens provides an interactive platform that can be used to demonstrate the features and benefits of a product, gamify the process of learning, and provide users with an in-depth look into a brand’s personality, values, and story,” explains Shababi.
“Congrats to Farhad and Faraz for making education interactive and fun,” said a spokesperson from Snapchat.
Founded in 2011, Snapchat now reaches 750 million monthly active users around the world, according to a statement from the company. In Canada, Snapchat reaches 80% of 13-24 year-olds and 75% of 13-34 year olds.
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