Niantic: Wol

Wol is mixed reality prototype experience we developed in partnership with Liquid City and Niantic. It features an AI-enabled owl who joins you in your space through an AR portal, opening a door to the redwood forest and engaging in natural conversation about the forest ecosystem.

Niantic is a leading developer of AR games and applications constantly innovating and expanding its portfolio of games and technologies. To showcase the potential of AR and 8th Wall’s most powerful feature, Metaversal Deployment, we brought to life a mixed reality prototype experience called Wol.

Wol joins you in your space through an AR portal which opens a door to the redwood forest. As an AI-enabled owl, Wol is ready to have a natural conversation about the forest and its ecosystem. It can be accessed in the browser on the Meta Quest Pro headset or an iOS or Android smartphone, no installation required.

The Wol experience was created to showcase 8th Wall's Metaversal Deployment feature, which empowers developers to create content once and deploy it across various devices, giving it the widest possible reach. The AI-enabled character, Wol, was created using Inworld, the developer platform for AI characters. The Inworld Engine incorporates various machine learning and character AI models, replicating human gestures, speech, safety, emotion, and memory. This technology has been integrated with 8th Wall to power Wol’s distinct personality and contextual awareness and proved crucial for performance optimization. Additionally, by leveraging the websockets capability of Inworld, we achieved ultra-low latency, ensuring conversations happen almost in real time.

Wol's interactive 3D world is the impressive result of a powerful collaboration between 8th Wall and ThreeJS. 8th Wall uses JavaScript and WebGL to incorporate a special engine called Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), optimized for real-time Augmented Reality (AR) experiences in web browsers. ThreeJS simplifies WebGL complexities, allowing smooth operation across modern browsers, mobile devices, and seamless integration with web pages. Additionally, Spatial Audio from ThreeJS enhances immersion, providing users with a surround-sound-like experience.

To manage the sequence of user experiences effectively, we developed a custom "timeline" using TypeScript, ensuring reliability and stability through static typing and type inference.

For handling complex synchronization of application events, we utilized the Zustand library, optimizing communication between different elements and improving overall performance.

In creating scalable individual views, React was invaluable. By leveraging components and hooks, we achieved reusable, stateful logic. Code-splitting further improved performance and resulted in a clean, efficient codebase and a captivating user experience.

• 8thWall Cloud Editor
• InWorld AI
• React
• Zustand
• Three JS

Together with Liquid City and Niantic, our team has developed a first-of-its-kind web experience, combining mixed reality, GenAI, and 8th Wall's Metaversal Deployment.

Visit meetWol.com to embark on your woodland experience.

• Reach out to us if you are interested in developing an AR experience of the future:

office@lepolishbureau.com