Overview
When Hermès asked for an "astonishing and surprising" experience for their annual "Saut Hermès" event in 2023, Superbien imagined Jungle Jumps. The concept is a magical, interactive virtual horse race where the controls are radically simplified: participants control their horse's jumps solely by jumping on a real trampoline. The experience was an immediate hit, with over 3,000 plays during the event weekend. The overwhelming feedback led Hermès to extend it to several other countries.
Technical details
The installation creates a seamless link between a physical jump and a virtual action. Lidar sensors placed under each trampoline capture precise distance data from the user's jump. This raw data is processed in TouchDesigner, which calibrates it and sends clean OSC commands to the game engine. The game itself was built in Unity, using a timeline-based run for a controlled race flow. The magical atmosphere was crafted using custom shaders and visual effects created with Unity's Shader Graph and VFX Graph, brought to life by a blend of Animator and C# scripts.