After a twelve-year absence, Honda announced that it was bringing back its Africa Twin motorcycle.

The bike, inspired by the NXR750 - four times winner of Paris-Dakar in the late 80’s was first made available to the public in 1988 and quickly established its place amongst adventure motorcyclists and commuters. Even after production stopped in 2003 the bike can still be seen on roads all over the world today.

Prior to the release of the new CRF1000L Africa Twin, Honda wanted to show a life-size model of the new motorcycle, creating excitement and increasing desire for the legendary bike.

Through the research and inspiration phase we discovered that using real-time 3D was the best option to create a smooth and engaging user experience. Teams were created to tackle the design, interactive, 3D, and development workflows.

To ensure our augmented reality experience stand out amongst other AR apps, we used our own AR framework and several in-house processes to achieve maximum

accuracy of the bike models in AR mode:

• We utilized the Unity 3D Gaming Engine, with custom produced shaders to enhance the vast materials at the smallest details with lighting changes.

• The image captured by the device camera is used to provide lighting and reflection helping to further integrate the bike into the environment.

• Ambient occlusion is used to approximate how bright light should be shining on any specific part of a surface, based on the light and its environment. This provides realistic self-shadowing, adding depth to the model and preventing the bike from appearing to be floating in the environment.

• With spatially aware, markerless technology, riders could check out a realistic augmented reality bike in any environment.