Edinburgh Digital Entertainment Festival
360° & VR, Events
Almost 70 years after it first began, the world’s biggest international arts festival, The Edinburgh Festival, incorporated a new digital arm in 2016.
Brief
Central to the new digital entertainment festival was the Tech Hub, an interactive playground filled with experiences designed to inspire visitors about the future of entertainment technology. With 360° video and immersive VR the main theme, organisers looked to Pufferfish to offer something as an alternative to the Oculus headsets placed throughout the space a collaborative viewer that allowed people to share in the magic of VR in a communal way.
Solution
The PufferTouch 600mm presented itself as the perfect fit for the festival. Allowing users to explore the content using touch on a native 360° monitor, the PufferTouch transformed dynamic 360° videos into an outside-in perspective and offered visitors a captivating experience. The 600mm screen allowed the seamless 360° video and images to be viewed by adult attendees above, over and around the sphere while remaining accessible and inviting to children.
The Pufferfish team created a bespoke ‘Edinburgh in 360° ‘application for the event, designed to allow users to explore the city and it’s most popular attractions in an entirely new way. We reached out to the pool of talented 360° content producers in Scotland who provided their stunning videos of Edinburgh’s most famous landmarks for the occasion. The app included a selection of content including a breath-taking flyover of Edinburgh Castle and day and night images over the cityscape by Airborne Lens. Luma 3di showcased their video of Edinburgh’s Christmas markets and a seamlessly stitched behind the scenes tour of the anatomical museum, while Rosie Collins offered fun footage from inside the enclosures at Edinburgh Zoo.
Summary of outcomes
Organisers were pleased to be able offer a diverse mix of hardware with the PufferTouch featuring prominently and delighting families with not only the app but also a multi-player game designed by Pufferfish to pit people against each other in a fastest finger first showdown.
Running for the duration of the month-long festival, the exhibit proved to be a hit with a steady stream of visitors eager to experience the future in technology. The PufferSphere proved to be key in driving social engagement with visitors like Red Dwarf star Robert Llewellyn posting about their interactions with the sphere. Featuring as part of the Edinburgh Fringe again in 2017, we look forward to seeing what organisers do to push the boundaries of this innovative new festival.