Tango developer workshop brings stories to life

Posted by Eitan Marder-Eppstein, Senior Software Engineer for Tango

Technology helps us connect and communicate with others -- from sharing commentary and photos on social media to a posting a video with breaking news, digital tools enable us to craft stories and share them with the world.

Tango can enhance storytelling by bringing augmented reality into our surroundings. Recently, the Tango team hosted a three-day developer workshop around how to use this technology to tell incredible stories through mobile devices. The workshop included a wide range of participants, from independent filmmakers and developers to producers and creatives at major media companies. By the end of the workshop, a number of new app prototypes had been created. Here are some of the workshop highlights:

  • The New York Times experimented with ways to connect people with news stories by creating 3D models of the places where the events happened.
  • The Wall Street Journal prototyped an app called ViewPoint to bring location-based stories to life. When you’re in front of a monument, for example, you can see AR content and pictures that someone else took at that site.
  • Line experimented with bringing 3D characters to life. For example, app users could see AR superheros in front of them, and then their friend could jump into the characters’ costumes.
  • Google’s Mobile Vision Team brought music to life by letting people point their phones at various objects and visualize the vibrations that music makes on them.

We even had an independent developer use Tango to create realtime video stabilization tool. We’re looking forward to seeing these apps—and many more—come to life. If you want to start building your own storytelling and visual communication apps for augmented reality, check out our developer page and join our G+ community.