Disney launches Oz-themed Google Chrome web experience
Disney has launched a Google Chrome experiment based on the upcoming film Oz: The Great and Powerful.
The company worked with digital media production agency Unit 9 to create the experience, called Find Your Way to Oz, which uses HTML5 web technologies to provide an interactive, 3D animated browser-based experience.
Visitors to findyourwaytooz.com can navigate through a Kansas circus, inhabited by the wizard, to the land of Oz where they will be swept up by a major storm. The experience is aimed at uniting traditional filmmaking effects and 3D with HTML5 web technologies including WebGL.
People can also compose tunes on the music box and link up their webcams to take photos of themselves in the photo booth.
The site also provides an extended preview of the movie, due for release in cinemas on 8 March.
Meanwhile there is a smaller-scale version of the site available for tablets and smartphones via the Chrome browser apps for iOS and Android.
Christos Apartoglou, marketing manager at Google, said in a blog post that Chrome experiments 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 and CSS3. It’s enhanced by rich audio effects thanks to the Web Audio API.
"The photo booth and zoetrope were built using the getUserMedia feature of WebRTC, which grants webpages access to your computer’s camera and microphone, with your permission,” he said.
The work is the latest Chrome Experience from Google, having previously worked with partners to create experiences including for the “100,000 Stars” experiment launched last November.
A detailed study of the technological process behind the experiment has been released.