Holo

Mix your world with holograms.

Holo lets you add 'holograms' of real people and animals into your world and take photos & videos to share with friends. It was featured by Apple for the launch of ARKit, the launch of iPhone X and App Store Best of 2017.

About Holo

A closer look.

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Best of 2017. Apple featured Holo in App Store Best of 2017 for Trends of the Year in Augmented Reality, and 8i in the Developers category.

Mix your world with holograms. Holo let users add 'holograms' of real people and animals into their environment using augmented reality to create shareable content.

These holograms were filmed in green-screen studios using 8i's volumetric video capture technology.

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Testing on iPhone X hardware at Apple HQ. I visited Apple's Sydney headquarters to test Holo and its ARKit integration on new hardware during the iPhone X launch period.

Augmented reality. I was responsible for researching and implementing the placement and interaction logic of Holos with ARKit.

My algorithm used raw point-cloud manipulation and projection techniques to make placement feel seamless and instant.

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WWDC live-demo preparations. Apple shortlisted Holo as a potential live demo for WWDC 2017. I worked directly on the build to address issues identified by Apple's engineers.

Over the moon. Holo partnered with MTV and Viacom (now Paramount) to promote the 2017 Video Music Awards by featuring holograms of Katy Perry's Moon Person performing viral dance moves.

The campaign generated almost 20 million impressions, 2.4 million views, and 278 thousand engagements across MTV social handles, influencer and fan accounts in just one week.

Lights. Camera. Action. Users were able to browse and download animated holograms, place them in their environment and create videos or photos.

By using gestures to place, rotate and resize holograms, they could capture celebrities like World Cup winner Jerome Boateng from every angle.

Content, content, content. Holo featured a library full of content and marketing partnerships: Hearst and Cosmopolitan's Magic Mike Live dancers; actress Debby Ryan; MMA star Anderson Silva; comedian Flula Borg; Fall Out Boy's Llama puppet; pop duo Superfruit; dancer Chachi Gonzales; digital creator Tristan Tale; skateboarder Nyjah Huston; Buzz Aldrin; Jon Hamm; R&B artist Jhené Aiko; Verizon’s Go90 and more.

The Holo team also released regular original content, including live animals and themed performers.

With great power comes great responsibility

With great power comes great responsibility. One of the biggest collaborations was with Sony and Marvel Studios to promote Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Users could interact with the Spider-Man character in videos and photos, Spider-Man Homecoming poses were placed over 1M times by 260k users, with over 280k captured videos.

Jon Hamm, the hologram. To promote Marjorie Prime (a film about holographic recreations of deceased loved ones), actor Jon Hamm was transformed into a “holohamm” for the premiere party at the Sundance Film Festival.

Behind the scenes. I implemented major parts of Holo’s VIPER architecture, including authentication, session management, push notifications, analytics, media library management, playback, image and video capture, sharing, character details, deep-linking, settings, social integration and ARKit.

I also spent time researching Metal, HVR playback and intern mentoring. I developed an independent app called 8i Player for management to demo holograms directly from files.

A global hit. Holo was featured by Apple to promote ARKit and the iPhone X launch. It was featured in the App Store Best of 2017 compilation. In its first 5 months, it reached over 1M users in over 240 countries.

It received extensive coverage by TechCrunch, The Verge, VentureBeat, Fast Company and other international tech media.