New Project: Explorer’s Flag

Placing virtual objects in the real world so others can find and see them is difficult. For example, GPS isn’t nearly accurate or reliable enough to record the placement of a coffee cup on a park bench, in fact, it doesnt even know the bench exists.

While we wait for this milestone, I wanted to see what’s possible now. It seems that planting a flag at a location would be forgiving of the limits of today’s tech and be an opportunity to explore the process of creating animated virtual objects.

My hope is that Explorer’s Flag will be a fun little app that you can take on a family hike and use to plant your virtual flag when you reach your destination or discover a scenic spot.

First steps

I’ve committed to the iOS ecosystem for this project, meaning it will be built with Apple’s tools and only work on iPhones.

To get started, I’ve been learning about ARKit Quick Look. It’s a building block for developers to place accurately sized virtual objects in their space, ie place a virtual couch in their living room.

Following the tutorial on Appcoda, and finding a suitable flag model, I’ve now got a rather boring MVP. It’s an unstyled flag that can be placed anywhere you want.

See it in action. It will work on most iPhones and doesn’t require a download.

Try it out.

iOS users can click the image of the flag below to launch QuickLook with a very simple flag.

Once the flag loads, click “AR” so you can place the flag in your environment.