Use an augmented reality game in Eugene to travel around Oregon

During the World Athletics Championships Oregon22 run at the University of Oregon’s Fuller Initiative Land Lab, an augmented reality scavenger hunt can take players on a 360-degree journey to seven Oregon regions.

Located on a 15-acre parcel along the Ruth Bascom Bike Trail that connects the Eugene Riverfront Festival to Hayward Field, the Land Lab is a research treasure that may not be obvious to the casual walker or runner.

For starters, it’s an ongoing experiment in sustainable landscape design. Since 2018, UO landscape architecture professor Michelle Gefel has been working on the land to reduce regular mowing, reduce invasive plants, restore wildlife habitat, and create something beautiful.

When it began, the area was a barren field that was plowed into the soil twice a year. Today, it’s a lush landscape of yellow and purple wildflowers and home to a variety of rodents, birds and foxes. Instead of mowing the entire acre, patches of grass are mowed in alternating patterns to isolate and stop the spread of sprawling blackberry bushes, creating walking trails for people to explore.

Visitors will also notice man-made structures in the field. There is a fence carved into the shape of a rose or uneven across the field to evoke the rugged lava fields of central Oregon.

These elements are part of the mobile augmented reality game and temporary art installation “Restoring the Balance”. The game is the brainchild of Christopher Daradix, who works at the university’s Center for Applied Second Language Studies.

Daradix says he is interested in creating “flexible play spaces, where we can build contexts designed for people to perform in ways that have some structure, but allow for improvement.”

This is the academic way: games to learn.

This unique game begins by picking up a flyer in a bucket under the Land Lab entrance sign and scanning a QR code to access the game’s online interface. (You can also access the mobile game interface here.)

The flyer acts as a game board and map to the seven stations in the Land Lab, each with signs and puzzles. The game forces users to leave a paved path and cross the field, searching for clues among the loaded toys, similar to an escape room – except wider.

Users who don’t know where to start can start by searching for letters among the installers.

Each installation represents a different region of Oregon, from the coast, the Willamette Valley to the eastern part of the state. Each puzzle solved unlocks a 360-degree digital view on a mobile device of the unique Oregon landscape.

Unlock all seven and be rewarded with a digital “Hero Badge” and the ultimate clue to a real-life prize hidden in a locked cache in the field.

“Restoring the Balance” was created specifically for the World Athletics Championships to invite Oregon visitors to the landscapes in the state. The interactive game is only planned for this month, but look for more interactive experiences coming to Land Labs in the future.

– Samantha Swindler sswindler@oregonia.com, @editorswindler