ARnold: A Mixed Reality Short Film using Microsoft HoloLens

ARnold is a mixed reality (MR) film built for the Microsoft HoloLens that takes place in the viewer's living room. The film uses the concepts of Spatial Mapping, Spatial Understanding, Spatial Audio, and World Anchors to place multiple scenes on the viewer's actual surroundings; and dynamically changes the storyline based on the objects in the room. ARnold takes these technological opportunities and applies them to traditional storytelling techniques to create a film that is uniquely suited for MR. The main purpose of this project was to explore whether telling personalized experiences with a viewer-chosen setting increases empathy and creates a deeper emotional connection with the story. This paper also discusses the technical limitations of Microsoft HoloLens along the lines of how it affected our entire development cycle and the different techniques we adopted to tackle this challenge. This paper provides a detailed overview of our entire development cycle from both a technical and creative standpoint.