Overview

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Trees provide value in many realms, including environmental, economic, cultural, and aesthetic. Their important roles as ecosystem service providers are quantified in dollar amounts and they are actively inventoried as assets held by cities. The Ohio State University has collected data on nearly every tree on campus and recognizes the need for additional plantings. ARTrees, which is short for Augmented Reality Trees, functions as an engaging interface between the real world (actual trees on campus), a potential future (virtual tree canopy), and multiple types of data. We believe this research will generate productive conversations across disciplines about how data is experienced and how trees are valued and it will highlight the interactions between cultural and scientific values.

As a Mobile Application Developer I wrote C# code to interpret GIS and GPS GeoJson positioning data in relation to real world trees. Utilizing the Unity game development engine, I used Augmented Reality to portray our data as virtual trees across The Ohio State University campus.

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