SwingAboveHamburg:VirtualRealitySwingattheReeperbahnFestival

Swing Above Hamburg: Virtual Reality Swing at the Reeperbahn Festival

"Simply sit on the swing and the world’s at your feet. The only way to enjoy a festival feeling, with your head in the clouds." Inspired by this feeling, we let the visitors of the Reeperbahn Festival swing into unknown heights and distances...

Our Virtual Reality Swing Experience Conquers the Reeperbahn Festival

With the Virtual Reality swing “Swing above Hamburg,” we aimed to provide visitors of the Future Playground at the Reeperbahn Festival with a playful approach to VR. Therefore, we adapted and further developed the concept of the experience, which we originally developed for the Lufthansa Group together with Kolle Rebbe, to establish a connection to the festival and Demodern's Hamburg location:

The visitors swung over Hamburg's infamous district St. Pauli and the Reeperbahn. This enabled festival-goers to identify with the application and created an even more immersive experience than before.

Further Development of the Concept

The concept was expanded to include interaction between the spectators and the user in virtual reality: Spectators could control events (such as fireworks) via buttons on a micro-keyboard outside the virtual reality. This allowed us to achieve two goals: The next user knew what to expect, and we sparked the interest of bystanders who wanted to try out the VR swing right away.

Technical Challenge

The biggest technical challenge was integrating the Stream Deck so that the spectator could control events within the VR experience from the outside. Both systems, the Stream Deck and the application in virtual reality, had to be as intuitive as possible so that both users could independently enter the experience without much explanation. This allowed us to ensure mutual enjoyment and a high throughput rate for a publicly available application.

The Development of the Application

Starting from 3D renderings in Maya, ZBrush, and Substance Painter, we then developed the interactive experience and real-time 3D elements in Unity. New to the application was the use of the Stream Deck for involving the spectators.

What Else You Should Know...
  1. The visitors are about 5,000 meters above the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, allowing most users to directly identify with the application.
  2. Immersive experience with binaural sound (by German Wahnsinn).
  3. The spectator can trigger events in the VR experience via six buttons and thus interact with the user in real-time.
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