You won’t need magical powers to take a journey down the Yellow Brick Road; just point your favorite browser to the latest Chrome Experiment, “Find Your Way to Oz.” Developed in collaboration with Disney and UNIT9 [1] in anticipation of the upcoming film, Oz The Great and Powerful [2], this experiment takes you through a dusty Kansas circus and leads to a vibrant land, following in the footsteps of the Wizard himself.
Like any good circus, there’s plenty to keep you entertained: compose your own music, play with a fun photo booth and create your own movie with a zoetrope. The path to Oz also involves confronting an ominous tornado; surviving it completes the journey, enabling fans of the movie to watch an exclusive unreleased clip from the film.
Chrome Experiments [3] like “Find Your Way to Oz” would have been impossible a few years ago. Since that time, the web has evolved and allowed developers and designers to create immersive beautiful experiences. For “Find Your Way to Oz” the 3D environment was built entirely with new technologies such as WebGL [4] and CSS3 [5]. It’s enhanced by rich audio effects thanks to the Web Audio Application Programming Interface (API) [6]. The photo booth and zoetrope were built using the getUserMedia [7] feature of WebRTC [8], which grants webpages access to your computer’s camera and microphone (with your permission, of course).
For the best experience, you’ll need to use an up-to-date computer built to handle intense graphics. It also works best with a webcam and a modern browser that supports WebGL and WebRTC, like Chrome [9]. For tablet or smartphone users, there is a smaller scale yet equally enjoyable experience users can try with the latest Chrome browser on their Android device, iPhone or iPad.
To learn more, or run away and join the developer circus, there is an explanation of the technologies used on the Chromium blog [10] or in Google’s technical case study [2].
Start your journey towards the yellow brick road at www.findyourwaytooz.com [11].
Source: Walt Disney Studios
Links:
[1] http://www.unit9.com/
[2] http://link/
[3] http://www.chromeexperiments.com/
[4] http://www.chromeexperiments.com/webgl/
[5] http://www.w3schools.com/css3/default.asp
[6] http://chromium.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/audio/index.html
[7] http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/getusermedia/intro/
[8] http://www.webrtc.org/
[9] http://www.google.com/chrome/cirque?gl=US&hl=en-US&utm_source=en_US-chromeblog-na-US&utm_medium=chromeblog&utm_campaign=en_US
[10] https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/document/d/1wBq9jhcW-TtbLkcGj2DoAYskIkSgX-6bLDKqfG0znDg/edit
[11] http://www.findyourwaytooz.com