_Hoverlay

Hoverlay is an AR web platform that enables people to create & share digital content, 2D images, video, 3D content, and sound as an overlay. Hoverlay universal links and camera-based AR browsers allow anyone to extend traditional web pages with content that users can experience in their physical space. An advantage of Hoverlay is that since it geolocates your channel based on where you published it, the app automatically suggests the content to anyone nearby. Additionally, Hoverlay creates a unique channel link that you can share that will take users straight into one’s channel.

Hoverlay 2.0, can currently run on iOS and Android. It generates a unique URL for each digital content, which can be placed in web pages, social posts, texts, or emails. Once clicked, users interact with the content. Built upon ARKit and ARCore, Hoverlay provides powerful spatial computing capabilities—such as map-based placement, game-like visual composer and online analytics—while ensuring seamless integration into today’s user journeys.

No coding is required. Creators can place virtual content at any location. They can arrange content spatially around users to invite them to explore and interact with content around and above them. One can record anyone in front of a green screen, upload the video file and Hoverlay automatically creates a full-size hologram. Its main characteristics are:

• Using built-in SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) objects are at-scale and held in space while viewers walk around.
• Increasing realism, by sampling the real world’s light intensity, warmth, and environmental color, and applying it to the content for each viewer.
• Turning occlusion on to hide virtual objects behind people or real things when using compatible mobile devices.

Storytellers, artists and documentarians might use Hoverlay to create and place 3D objects that viewers can interact with using their mobiles. These AR objects are experienced in the user’s environment, so viewers moving around a physical space could discover them by scanning different spots with their mobile phones. Read more about how Northeastern and MIT storytelling experts brought 4 local stories across Toronto to life, using Augmented Reality.