Expo Dubai Xplorer
Expo 2020 Dubai
Issue 62 | March 2022
Agency
Magnopus
Creative Team
Lead Narrative Designer: Jeff Leinenveber Animation Director: David Weatherly Art Directors: James Grant Technical, David Dalzell, Erol Kentli
Production Team
Director: Ben Grossmann Executive Producer: Daisy Leak Head of Studio, UK: Justin Manning Director of Engineering: David Swift, Sam Birley Director of Technology: Kevin Mullican
Other Credits
The multiplayer experience has been in development for nearly three years with world-class partners including Google, Unity Technologies, and Amazon Web Services with key contributions from: Virtuos (3D asset development) Hexagram (quest narrative design and technology) Pinscreen (avatar technology with AI-driven face synthesis) Dog Studio (web development for Virtual Expo connected to content databases) VIM (BIM conversion technology) Terahard (activation development) Activated Realities (activation development) Source Sound (audio design and development)
Date
Oct 2021 - March 2022
Background
The Magnopus team flew to Dubai in 2018 and was briefed to make Expo 2020 Dubai a unified experience across the digital and physical worlds. Fast forward four years, and a global pandemic later, that future-facing global experience is now live.
Idea
Expo Dubai Xplorer is a rich digital experience that allows anyone, anywhere to experience the magic of Expo 2020 Dubai with friends, whether on-site or at home. The digital layer built for the World Expo has enabled all the physical content—from the designs of the architects to the narratives of the pavilions—to be accessible to people around the world, on common devices, in a way that breathes new life into the experience with augmented reality and digital twins. Unique features include: >Real-time connectivity between on-site and remote users. Standing on the Expo site, a visitor may see a friend from the other side of the world (viewed through the lens of their phone) as an avatar they can share experiences with, and communicate with via group creation and messaging. >One of the largest deployments in the world of persistent Cloud Anchors which allow millions of on-site visitors to enjoy augmented reality spectacles aligned accurately to real-world locations. Remote visitors can access the same AR content and experiences, over a connected digital twin of the site, via an interface similar to popular mobile games like Fortnite or Roblox. >A social, interactive digital twin of the 4.38km² Expo site built from architectural files and enriched with content and experiences. Hundreds of artists working around the world spent more than two years creating the living digital replica, enhancing it with dynamic lighting, art installations, animated experiences, and stunning spectacles. Virtual reality was used to collaboratively develop the designs and experiences so they could be tested before the physical site was even built.