The world in 2070: Nat Geo’s AR Instagram Interactive

🗣 Tied to the April Earth Day issue, National Geographic created their very first augmented reality-enabled cover that conveys a cautionary outlook of climate change using projected climate data to bring the cover to life. Users are able to see climate data in 12 key cities across the globe and get a sense of what those locations might feel like 50 years from now.

How cool is that? 🤔

The cover was built using Instagram’s Spark AR to allow anyone on Instagram, not just @natgeo followers, to use the interactive.

How to use it?

🗣 Launching the interactive brings up a digital version of the magazine.

👉 Pinch to adjust the size as you see fit. With AR, you can set the cover and globe to be any size—to fit in the palm of your hand or fill a room. Then click on a flat surface to launch the experience.

🌎 A globe rises out of the cover, with the headline “What the world will feel like in 2070.” Because the globe is a 3D model, users can stand up and walk around it while it rotates. AR is best experienced when users physically move around the digital object, rather than using their fingers to move the object on their phones.

Yellow nodes will appear on 12 cities. Clicking on each one shows current climate data for that city. A line is then drawn from that city across the globe to a place that’s projected to have the same climate in 50 years.

For example, in 2070, Los Angeles will feel more like Morocco’s Ouezzane Province does today. For some locations, no line is drawn, because there is no place on the planet that feels the same today as that location will in 50 years!

Feel free to click on as many nodes as you would like, or on the astronomically correct stars around them. If you enjoy the interactive, you can take a video recording by pressing the globe icon at the bottom to share it on your Instagram stories.

How to access the cover?

🗣 You can find the interactive with all other AR filters on Instagram.

1.   Open Instagram.
2.   Swipe left on the home page to open the Instagram camera.
3.   Tap the globe icon.
4.   Search The World In 2070.

👀 What are your thoughts? Have you used this experience yet? We are eager to know how you did! Let us know in the comments 👇