Augmented Reality Solar System
Dimensions
Aero Desktop
Aero Mobile
My department was beginning to put together a new AR/VR emphasis and was looking for students interested in taking part in a class that would help shape the future of this new degree. I immediately said yes! I believe Augmented and Virtual Realities (AR and VR) have limitless potential especially in the realm of education.
My professor wanted each student to make a unique project, with different interactions. I first began my downloading and opening Adobe dimensions and Aero to see what they were all about. Dimensions allows shape creation and Aero allows those shapes to be given different animated properties, for example. When I saw the spheres that could be made, I thought it be would be really cool to make a solar system. Below is an example of a shape in Dimensions.
Dimensions allows the user to apply textures to any object. There are lots of predefined textures, but none for planets. After searching online I came across a site with textures for each planet in our solar system. I downloaded a copy of each one to use.
Once I figured out how to apply the textures to each planet, I exported them in a usable file for Adobe Aero. Now, once inside Aero, I began determining the size of each planet as well as each one’s rotation and orbital speed around the sun. Obviously, its not to direct scale in terms of speed and size, but I wanted each to contrast greatly with the other. Jupiter has a high rotation and a slow orbit whereas Mercury which has a slow rotation and a very fast orbit. Heres an example of the behaviors that can be applied to objects in Aero.
In Aero, there are two different ways to apply an AR experience. The first is with a target image. For example, say you have an animated house. The target would be a still image of that house that has been printed. The Aero mobile app uses your phone’s camera to locate that image and match the AR version with that. The other is freeform. Find a table or an open space, launch the experience, and begin. I chose the latter option. The planets rotate and orbit the sun. That was more than expected by my professor. He wanted each of us to have the concepts down of authoring for AR. The one issue I ran into was getting our moon to orbit our Earth which orbits the Sun. Aero may not have the capability to have nested orbits or actions within each other. GIFs don’t do this project justice.​​
Even after two years, Adobe Aero is still in beta as AR is still an emerging technology. I had a vision for this project once AR tech catches up. I imagine someone opening up this project, someone in elementary or middle school. It opens with a voiceover introducing them to our solar system which them zooms in on our Sun. Facts could be listed or read as an animation removes part of the sun so they can see the various layers. This process continues for each planet. It would also be neat if there were touchable or a gesture-based UI to allow the user to remove a section of the planet, allow voiceovers, and choose where to start.