Scenery is an Apple-native XR creation and storytelling suite that flips the script on how immersive experiences are built and distributed. The multi-sensory experiences you create run both on mobile and Apple Vision Pro, can be location-based, and globally accessible. Interview with co-founder Marc Wicht.
Marc Wicht – Scenery is an XR creation storytelling suite that simplifies the creation process of immersive experiences and works both for mobile AR as well as for spatial computing experiences on Vision Pro. The one big USP is that you can quickly and easily create experiences and share them without users needing to download an application. You can create high quality immersive experiences that are not perceived as a gimmick like so many other AR experiences.
M. W. – Our AR journey started in 2018 when my co-founder, Arthur Schiller, and I built Scavengar. It’s an AR scavenger hunt app. We thought that if AR experiences are meant to be perceived as something that aren’t a gimmick, then they need to be embedded in your surroundings. There needs to be an interaction between what’s happening on screen in your virtual space and your physical surroundings. We built Scavengar and the very first brand that reached out to us was Apple.
M. W. – In 2020, Apple announced a framework called App Clips that basically gave us the ability to share an experience without downloading a full application. We saw the potential to really enable other people to create high quality experiences and still keep them accessible. We thought we could build a framework, like a blueprint or toolbox, so that even with smaller budgets and timeframes, you can still achieve a high quality experience. We took what we learned from Scavengar and implemented it into Scenery. Where Scavengar is targeted for the end consumer, Scenery is built for professional, designers, and creators.
M. W. – We built Scenery because it solves the problem of creating high-quality AR experiences easily and without sacrificing accessibility due to leveraging App Clips.
M. W. – After gaining massive amounts of feedback from hundreds of creative studios and agencies, there seems to be a magic number when thinking about ideal budgets for immersive (AR) activations. $50K – with an average expected turnaround of 6 weeks. That’s tough for creation and hosting when you’re building from scratch. It’s definitely possible, but almost never hits the necessary level of quality and sacrifices on too many levels which are needed to make it a good experience.
M. W. – With Scenery, your budget goes a way longer, you’re pushing for the best-possible quality and immersion without spending half of your budget on hosting (looking at you, 8thWall).
How is Scenery different from other AR creation platforms?
M. W. – If we look at Spark AR, you didn’t need to download a new app if you had Instagram on your phone installed. But you still were operating in that walled garden, which was Instagram. That’s a big advantage I think that WebAR has – complete freedom being unbound from an app. Then again, the quality of these WebAR experiences is not where it needs to be for it to be perceived as something of high quality and for something that really has immersion.
M. W. – With Scenery you can cross deploy the very same experience to Vision Pro and open up that realm of spatial computing and headset based experiences––without needing to make a decision of one platform over the other. Build it once with Scenery and deploy it everywhere.
M. W. – No matter the game engine, Unity or whatever it might be, it’s bit of a complex process to build and deploy something. You save the changes, you push the changes to your phone, then you try it out. If it’s not working or looking as expected, you rinse and repeat. We thought this is a tiring process, and is something that is tiring for many other creators and developers out there.
M. W. – So we came up with a hot reloading feature. If you’re editing your immersive experience on your computer and you’re viewing it at the same time on your mobile device or Vision Pro, the moment you make changes in the editor, you can push the changes in real time to the device––and the changes reflect instantly. It makes it so much more convenient to make changes, to tweak animations, to see if your character better appears on the right or to the left, or if an object, a virtual sculpture, just fades in or maybe scales and fades.
M. W. – You can tweak your project very quickly with just two clicks and without spending ten minutes between each development step or change. We have two visual positioning systems (VPS) implemented both with Geospatial API from Google as well as Location Anchors from Apple. That basically makes the placement and the localization of the individual user that is on site really easy. They just pull up their phone and they don’t need to scan a code or a marker and they don’t need to manually position themselves or drop some points on a map. Everything falls into place automatically, which is really important for location-based AR.
What is the Pricing?
M. W. – Scenery is a freemium application, meaning anybody can download and start creating for free. If you really want to upload more than one or two of your models or mixed media types or start with templates for a proper foundation to create an immersive experience, then you will need to purchase a license.
M. W. – Scenery offers a variety of licenses. You can purchase a pro license for 10€ per month (billed annually) or agency license for 100€ per month (also billed annually) or commercial licenses to use your experience for other brands or for other agencies. Beginning with the pro license and up, you get full power and control over creation and distribution without app download.
M. W. – This is where we try to be different and we listened to the pain points of brands and agencies out there. The most obvious comparison is the 8thWall web player because they charge for the commercial license on a monthly basis. Whereas with Scenery, we keep that commercial licensing fee as a one-off payment so that it doesn’t make a difference if you’re running a project in a cultural space that’s supposed to run 6 months, a year or longer. We also offer tiered commercial licenses. The more licenses you buy, the price goes down.
What about Customization for Creators
M. W. – Scenery is a no-code/low code editor. It’s important to give the opportunity and the ability to dive deeper and influence your experience with code. At the same time, it’s also important to not exclude all the people who don’t know how to code. So first and foremost, it’s a no-code tool. If you really want to dive deeper, you can write your own custom shaders. You can influence and alter your experience with JavaScript. This way we try to offer both options and I think that is the right approach.
M. W. – We also operate as a studio which makes Scenery different from other platforms. If there is a certain feature completely missing that is a necessary for your project, then we offer custom feature development on top of what the platform is offering already. That way we are we can be pretty flexible and give creators the ability to create bespoke projects or projects that check all the boxes that they need. Scenery also has multiple scene support which makes it a lot easier to create complex experiences that have different chapters.
Why Augmented Reality?
M. W. – My background originally is in film science. It’s the theoretical approach to the medium of film. Both film analysis and also what role has film played in society. In 2016 I stumbled upon 360 video and it basically ticked these two boxes. It was film and I was amazed by the ability to just like look around in film. Free yourself of that rectangular screen and open it up. I loved it and I saw the potential.
M. W. – However, when diving deeper into this, I honestly got bored rather quickly. The next logical step for me was to dive deeper into interactive VR. That was 2017 and 2018 when you needed a big and hefty computer and all the gear. AR had a lot of these elements of giving you the ability to tell stories that are otherwise invisible to you. But at the same time, it was so much more accessible.
M. W. – AR is beautiful because you can make these stories of places, of people, of history come alive and tangible. It’s so beautiful to give that to other people and let them experience. Add spatial audio and custom haptics to the recipe, then this is truly powerful.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.