"It's about getting people off the sofa and into Bremerhaven"

Imagine you are in Bremerhaven for the first time. You have just visited the German Emigration Centre; now you want to see the Hanseatic cog in the German Maritime Museum just a few hundred metres away. While you are still full of enthusiasm and the spirit of discovery, your younger fellow travellers start to whinge. Fortunately, a large playground in front of the museum entrance invites them to swing and run around. To be honest, you also feel like taking a short break. Next to the climbing frame, by a small stream, you discover two pillars with a QR code inviting you to play a game of sink ships. On your smartphone display, with the real watercourse in the background ...

How does that work? With augmented reality, or AR for short. This is an extension of perceived reality with the help of additional information generated on the computer. In this example, this means that you can see the real water on your display with the help of the camera and a virtual grid cross on it, on which you can now place animated sailing ships on the virtual playing field with your index finger. Now you just need a team mate and you're ready to go! It's simple and has an amazing effect.

"It's about getting people off the sofa and into Bremerhaven"

The game was developed by a group of twelve computer science and business informatics students at Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences. "Our project is about getting people off the sofa and into Bremerhaven," explains Constantin van der Woude. He is in his seventh semester of computer science and presented this and another AR experience with his fellow students at the university's "Computer Science Day". The great thing was that visitors were able to start playing right away at the stand of the group, which calls itself "Seaside AR" with its supervising professor Thomas Umland.

City commissions students
 
The students were commissioned to develop the project by the city council of the maritime city and the city marketing organisation "Erlebnis Bremerhaven". "With our playful and collaborative applications, we are expanding the 'Bremerhaven Guide' city tour and building on previous student projects," explains van der Woude. He and his fellow students are capitalising on the popular trend towards gamification, "which ensures that people have fun". And the city should also benefit: "The players collect points and can then exchange them for real rewards in the café or restaurant." The development steps leading up to the finished game were complex: "We thought about what technical limitations we needed to solve - should ten or 100,000 people be able to play the game at the same time," the student recalls. Their solution: they configured the game environment so that several groups of two can each join a so-called lobby and play with each other. At the same time, spectators can follow the game in real time on their display. "We also built in a chat function that deletes the data as soon as the players leave the game."

Students present their work to their clients

The game continues for the "Seaside AR" group: they will soon be presenting their virtual ship-sinking game and another game to their clients. Perhaps two pillars with QR codes will soon be inviting Bremerhaven visitors to play.
The game continues for the "Seaside AR" group: they will soon be presenting their virtual ship-sinking game and another game to their clients. Perhaps two pillars with QR codes will soon be inviting Bremerhaven visitors to play.

Translated with the assistance of DeepL.