YDreams Brasil’s latest interactivity project involves gorgeous butterflies – virtual ones that is! The Virtual Butterfly Gallery, crafted for a permanent exhibition on butterflies native to the Atlantic rain forest in Rio de Janeiro state, inaugurated this past July 30th at Quitandina Palace in Petropolis, an historical city nestled in the forested hills north of Rio de Janeiro.
The exhibition was sponsored and put together by SESC (Social Services for Merchant Commerce) a non-profit Brazilian institute founded in 1946 that caters to the social well-being of mercantile and service industry professionals and their families. SESC organizes activities related to areas such as education, health, recreation, and culture.
YDreams solutions for the exhibit include butterflies of all shapes and colors projected onto a leaf-like sculpture that react as visitors approach by fluttering about and away. Visitors are also treated to eight 32” touch screen totems that feature extensive information about the different species, as well as the chance to create their own virtual butterfly, which they can then email to friends and family.
The videos below are two good examples of YDreams’ versatility and scope in producing projects for sectors as diverse as environmental education and awareness and retail.
The first, inaugurated in Julho 2009, is the Castelo Branco Environmental Interpretation Center, a space that offers visitors new and exciting ways to explore the nearby International Tagus River Park (Parque Internacional do Rio Tejo):
The second clip depicts the work we did to infuse some interactivity into the shopping experience at Salsa, a retail store at Colombo Shopping Center in Lisbon:
If you happen to be in Portugal, take some time to experience both!
(The BTEK project is particularly close to the hearts of our fellow YDreamers over in Barcelona, as well as our neighboring country. Therefore the post that follows is in English and Spanish.)
Last year we announced the official kickoff of the BTEK Interpretation Center project; this past June 9th it was officially inaugurated and is now open for business!
YDreams conceived and delivered 24 interactive solutions and two sound environments that welcome visitors before entering the center until they reach the first hall. Ain3Team studio was responsible for the interior design and exhibition scenography.
We collaborated closely with the Elhuyar Foundation, the entity responsible for managing and overseeing the project from start to finish. We developed all contents for our interactive installations, contents that ranged from computing and consumer electronics to communications, the Internet and the social implications technological development has on product life cycles. The significant deployment of technology and creativity involved the concerted efforts of a team of over 15 professionals, as well as artists and external studios, which after many months rendered a result we are all extremely proud of.
Technologies employed included Augmented Reality, image processing and gesture based technologies, as well as effects such as 3D contents, illustrations, videos, sound and musical theme creation. In addition to this furniture to support the numerous apps had to be designed, adapted and assembled as is the case of the sci-fi ‘Gene Workshop’!
Take a look at the video below for a peek into the BTEK Technology Interpretation Center:
Al inicio del año pasado anunciábamos el comienzo de los trabajos en este proyecto.
El Centro BTEK se inauguró el pasado día 9 de Junio. Para lo que es el primer centro de interpretación de la tecnología del País Vasco, ubicado en el Parque Tecnológico de Bizkaia, en Zamudio (en las afueras de Bilbao), hemos entregado 24 soluciones interactivas, además de 2 ambientes sonoros que acompañan a los visitantes desde el exterior mismo del Centro hasta la primera sala.
El diseño del museo ha estado a cargo del estudio ain3Team
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En colaboración y bajo la dirección de la Fundación Elhuyar, responsable de la dirección de proyecto, fuimos responsables por todos los contenidos científicos de nuestras instalaciones, en temas como la computación, electrónica de consumo, comunicaciones, Internet, las implicaciones sociales del desarrollo tecnológico o el ciclo de vida de los productos.
El importante despliegue tecnológico y creativo ha implicado a un equipo de más de 15 profesionales, así como artistas y estudios externos, a lo largo de muchos meses, en un esfuerzo conjunto del cual estamos muy orgullosos.
Se han aplicado realidad aumentada, procesamiento de imagen y tecnologías basadas en gestos, la Wii de Nintendo, contenidos 3D, ilustraciones, vídeos, efectos sonoros y temas musicales. El paquete se completa con el diseño industrial y montaje de algunas piezas de mobiliario, como la Célula (”Taller de Genes”), así como las componentes mecánicas y electrónicas de diversas soluciones.
Más info en la página de YDreams. Vídeo del Centro, cortesía de Teknopolis. PDF con fotos y descripciones de todas las soluciones.
We are happy to announce that we are offering users worldwide access to our proprietary development platform, code-named YVision.
You can find the registration form along with additional information at http://www.ydreams.com/yvisionbeta/ so register now because the offer is limited to a number of users.
As we may only accept a limited number of applications, you will have to convince us that you are the right person. Use the “What you would like to do with YVision?” field on the form to persuade us you are the right candidate!
YVision was developed by a dedicated team of professionals, who have been continuously improving the application since 2005. The platform is the motor behind more than 300 interactive solutions the company have developed over the years for clients the world over.
The ‘Family Blue Park’ conceived by YDreams for Gas Natural, one of Europe’s principal energy companies, inaugurated this past April 20th at the Dolce Vita Tejo Shopping Center on the outskirts of Lisbon. The theme park is comprised of interactive technologies that engage children through a series of games and activities that foster environmental awareness and teach energy efficiency.
The venue, geared at children between the ages of 6 and 10, is packed with interactive solutions that are fun and didactic. Activities on hand include interactive quizzes and games that simulate day to day situations in the home such as choosing the right kind of light bulbs, or selecting the most effective cycle on the washing machine. Other activities include blowing on miniature fan-blades or learning to use solar panels to generate renewable energies such as solar, wind and hydro.
The ‘Family Blue Park’, located in Dolce Vita Tejo’s central plaza, is open to the public daily through May 7th from 10h00 to 22h00. The park also welcomes and schedules daily school trips from all over Portugal.
To round off the theme park’s inauguration, Gas Natural held an awards ceremony for the winners of the Enerfixe competition an online game also developed by YDreams in 2009, to promote energy consumption awareness amongst children and young adults. The initiative brings together the ten top players and close to 200 of their respective classmates.
Have a peek at the video below, courtesy of TV Energia:
Engadget called it an infestation. The term infestation refers to a state of being invaded by another species. On one hand it implies an invasion, on the other hand it refers to organic stuff. It’s interesting to see our technology defined as organic because it relates with empathy, it’s more than just silicone chips - there is chemistry.
Last week, TiPb chose the word intimacy to describe the feeling of using an iPad. “If the television is a ‘lean back’ interface and the computer is a ‘sit forward’ interface, the iPad is an ‘embrace’ interface. You haven’t had a relationship with an object like this since your childhood teddy bear: you tote it around with you everywhere, you sit cuddled up with it, you take it to bed with you.”
It seems that the future of high-end digital products will bring an infestation of intimacy.
Knee-high Ferrari-Red robots are probably the last thing you’d expect to find in a serious & conservative environment like a bank. Yet there they are. Santander Group came to us about a year and a half ago asking for ‘something unexpected that people hadn’t seen before’ for their Visitors Center at ‘Ciudad Grupo Santander’, the group’s financial campus and HQ on the outskirts of Madrid.
The already awesome glass cube that is the gateway to the center and campus, has the little droids welcoming and guiding visitors to their desired destinations, but it doesn’t stop there. Digital ivory climbs the hi-res, LED paneled columns located at the entrance and further into the center a large scale model of the city that uses Augmented Reality, and a 12-meter tactile wall offers visitors an impactful and memorable way to explore the group’s history and global presence.
Today at 18h00, the first of four conferences by our CEO, António Câmara is underway at Lisbon’s arts and culture center, Culturgest. The talks will revolve around his visions for future public spaces, collective intelligence, intelligent objects and future forms of communication.
The remaining conferences will take place on the 17th, 24th and 31st of March also at 18h00. Entry is free so stop by if your are curious!
Couple of months ago I went on a field trip to visit Castelo Branco’s Environmental Center, a museum dedicated to explore the nearby International River Tagus Park (Parque Internacional do Rio Tejo).
I rode along with our Art Director and the Account Manager responsible for the project, the best tour guides one could hope for. It’s always interesting to learn how a project is born and evolves, how they nailed a particular concept or what changes they had to accommodate along the way.
Everything looked impeccable, with every application running smoothly and the industrial / interior design fitting perfectly with the environment. Our projects division is growing every year, and so is the overall quality of our interactive environments.
One of the things that I really noticed, though, were the interfaces. We’ve come a long way in designing interactive installations, and the experience we have amassed is really showing, both in programming and designing the applications.
On one hand, every installation featured a different interface, keeping things fresh and interesting for visitors, on the other hand, they were really intuitive, bringing learning curves to a minimum while featuring some neat tricks that keep users engaged.
Take the interactive table where users can learn about car tours in the region, for example. You can select and visualize different routes, and find more information about suggested points of interest. But you can also freely move the car around the map, watching it perform sharp turns and frantic racing around the map. It’s useless, yes, but still fun - and part of the experience.
I was also very curious to see how the interactive kayak would work. You hop on a real kayak, grab the paddle, and descend a section of the River tagus, projected right in front of you. You use the paddle to steer the kayak and can access multimedia information, when steering in specific directions. It works really well, and the fact that it is located in a separate room, with sound effects, scores points for immersion and learning.
There are several other installations and plenty to explore about the center, so you can either go to our website and see more pictures or, even better, go visit the center.
The last quarter of 2009 has seen some pretty cool project rollouts, ranging from works in public parks to sprucing up medieval castle keeps!
Augmented Reality scenic viewer adds the virtual to the real
The first, inaugurated in early October, involved revamping Santarém’sPortas do Sol Garden by deploying cutting edge tools such as Augmented Reality-enabled Virtual Sightseeing units to explore the pretty surrounding landscape, interactive tables and displays for learning more about the city’s rich history as well as the Roman excavation site located right in the park, and to round things off, multimedia audio-guides for making sure no stone is left unturned.
The latter project kicked off in late November and takes us further north into Portugal’s Serra da Estrela region; the city of Guarda to be more precise, where alongside a medieval castle keep equipped with 21st century multimedia technologies by YDreams, we also conceived the brand new Visitors Center, including the scenographic design and interactive tools for investigating what the city has to offer, and the interesting archaeological finds on display at the center.
A new format for learning about old relics
Visitors Center - scenography and technology by YDreams
Espaço Guimarães is the northern Portuguese city’s most recent commercial venue. Inaugurated this past November 4th, the mall has plenty to offer shopping enthusiasts, and on hand to make sure people know exactly where to go to get what they came for, are some very sleek and stylish center directories powered by YDreams technologies and designed by Gonçalo Silva Architects.
The directories’ stunning designs are complemented by YDreams intuitive interfaces. Finding what you need is quick and easy, plus each kiosk is equipped with a built-in Job Databank that lets folks looking to apply for a position at the mall, fill in an application form with the option of posing for the perfect picture to submit along with their app!
Photos courtesy of Gonçalo Silva Arqitectos Associados
Espaço Guimarães, along with Forum Barreiro and Coimbra, is the third shopping mall in Portugal that YDreams has developed directories for. Multi Mall Management, the leading commercial developer of inner-city retail spaces in Europe, oversees 16 centers in Portugal; at this rate expect to find our kiosks at every single one of them soon!
UM, which means ONE in Portuguese, is Portugal’s International Festival for Experimental Inter-media. The one of its kind festival in Portugal includes exhibitions, workshops, talks, concerts, performances and public works, with internationally renowned artists, musicians, academics, designers and architects.
It starts today and carries on till Sunday, the 15th of November. UM had its debut in 2008, and is back in 2009 for its 2nd edition. YDreams has always been a fan and supporter of the festival and is taking part this year as a commercial sponsor.
Charming and historical Monsanto, dubbed ‘the most Portuguese village in all of Portugal’ has a new claim to fame: it is the first town in the country to offer visitors and tourists an outdoor audio-guide system for exploring the town’s numerous highlights.
The audio-guide system developed by YDreams, runs on GPS-enabled PDAs that feature up to 24 points of interest in Monsanto. Visitors to the village no longer need to navigate the streets with confusing paper maps; instead the system’s integrated GPS technology automatically detects points of interest that are within the visitors’ range and triggers audio narrations, and displays additional images about each one.
Monsanto Audio Guides are managed and rented out to visitors by Edeventos, a local events organization firm. The amount of information provided by the audio-guide is incomparable to using a traditional map or guidebook, plus they come in three languages and there is even a version developed especially for children.
In the meantime, YDreams is currently working on a next-gen audio-guide, which aside from incorporating GPS and compass, will also integrate augmented reality technology to liven things up even more. So globe-trekkers, stay tuned – a new reality may be right around the corner in a town or city near you.
Check out the video below for a better look at the audio-guide in action (coverage in Portuguese):
Yesterday Bruce Sterling referenced our augmented reality scenic viewer on his blog! Bruce commented that “it was Interesting to see a kiosk application. If you can call that device a kiosk.”
And of course it is so much more than an average kiosk. Dubbed a virtual sightseeing scenic viewer, the totem-like device spins 360º and features a built-in screen and webcam that captures and displays exactly what you see before you on the screen in real-time. The magic resides in the fact that it uses augmented reality to merge virtual digital elements such as video, text and images with real live points in the landscape. Imagine aiming the scenic viewer at the Bastille in Paris and being able to watch a 3D historical recreation of the angry mobs storming the fortress-prison during the French revolution! The possibilities are endless and the Virtual Sightseeing scenic viewer has the capacity to make it real.
Below a video of our first scenic viewer deployed at Pinhel Castle in central Portugal back in 2005:
Lisbon’s National Pantheon also hosts our augmented reality scenic viewer:
The Barroso EcoMuseum in Montalaegre (northern Portugal) offers visitors to the region an insight into what makes their culture special and unique. The recently inaugurated museum collection is by nature traditional, however the way they’ve chosen to convey information to visitors is not.
The picture below features a wall of regional riches that represent much about the people of Montealegre. Objects on display range from work tools and arts and crafts to musical instruments and religious relics.
A few meters from the wall stand two interactive modules that YDreams conceived and developed specifically to explore the wall of Montalegre artifacts.
All visitors do is look into the screens displaying a real-time image of the wall of artifacts beyond. Tags indicating the name of each object appear next to the item on the screen; visitors then tap the screen over their item of choice to trigger additional information in the form of text and images about the objects that interest them most.
Pretty cool huh? An interactive Food Wheel, characteristic of the region of course, follows in August so stay tuned.
YVision, developed in-house by YLabs, our R&D center, is an advanced programming platform that creates powerful interactive multimedia applications that combine technologies such as 3D, physics simulation, computer graphics and gesture interaction, in a stable and efficient environment.
I recently learned that Pedro Alvares Cabral, the man who commanded the Portuguese armada that ‘happened’ upon Brazil, hailed from Belmonte – a small, charming town in north-central Portugal.
The town decided it was time they had a space exclusively dedicated to the Portuguese era of the discoveries – they called it Centro Interpretative de Belmonte. They also called on YDreams to add their special brand of creative technology to this singular museum space.
I was recently there with a film crew to get footage of the center, and not wanting to sound biased or anything, I’ve got to say that all parts involved (YDreams with all the interactive design components, conception and narrative and Pitanga Design with the scenography) did a fantastic job in recreating an unparalleled journey into the era of Portuguese discoveries, and the armada’s first encounters with the new world.
Exploring Belmonte’s Interpretive Center was a lot like a trip to a theme park with the historical contents of course - a treat for kids of all ages. The scenography combined with the design and amazing gesture-based apps made the narrative exciting and alot of fun to explore.
Some of my favorite apps include a huge screen projection that displays and plays the instruments used in popular Brazilian music genres like Samba, Bossa Nova and Chorinho. Arrows on the floor in front of the projection tell you where to step, skip or dance about to ‘magically’ turn the instruments on and off, or create your own unique combination of cool sounds.
In the room next door another interactive app recreates the vibrant pace and sounds of a traditional Brazilian market stall. Wooden paddles with special markers let you see yourself alongside the colorful fruits and vegetables native to the region in a large-sized plasma in front of you.
There is plenty to keep you informed and entertained but don’t take my word alone, pack the family and friends into a car and head over to Belmonte to see for yourself!
For a brief teaser, or if you can’t make it there anytime soon, have a look at what’s on in Belmonte in the video below.
We are forging ahead with our first major interactive project for the Spanish market, more precisely for Group Santander’s new HQ at Cuidad Financeira in Madrid.
Interesting post with plenty of visual examples by Ori Inbar, from Games Alfresco, on how Augmented Reality may be used to reinvent a number of industries .
