Night Tour of Taihe Lake

A nighttime cultural AR experience around Qingtian's Taihe Lake — visitors walk the lakeside trail and meet AR moments tied to local heritage and culture, from glowing rice fish and ancient grasshopper boats to a playful nod to Qingtian's most famous diaspora son, Jensen Huang. Confirmed by official media as Lishui Municipality's first XR cultural-tourism deployment, and built as a cross-platform experience that runs on both ordinary smartphones and Rokid AR glasses.

Project Overview

For Qingtian government and Chance 3D agency, Hyperyond engineered the technical platform for the entire Taihe Lake XR activation. Chance 3D directed the cultural narrative and creative design; Hyperyond was the sole technical contractor — building the spatial map, the AR runtime, the cross-device delivery layer, and operating the system on-site through the launch window.

During the Lantern Festival the platform handled around 3,000 visitors in a single day with roughly 14,200 total interactions, according to platform analytics — a high-density cultural activation by any measure. The project was confirmed as Lishui Municipality's first XR cultural-tourism mini-program by official media coverage, and went on to receive multiple regional industry awards in the metaverse and cultural-tourism categories.

Role Division: Chance 3D led cultural narrative, creative design, and the storytelling beats along the lakeside trail. Hyperyond was the sole technical contractor — owning the WebAR architecture, the spatial mapping work, the AR-glasses integration, and on-site operations.

Technical Solutions

Immersal + 8th Wall + Three.js — A Stack With No Precedent

The activation needed two things at once: web-grade install-free access for ordinary visitors, and high-fidelity spatial registration for outdoor experiences that span dozens of metres of lakeside trail. We built the experience on a combination that, at the time of delivery, had no public precedent we could find:

Immersal for visual SLAM and persistent spatial maps, anchoring AR content reliably across the entire trail.
8th Wall for browser-based AR runtime — install-free entry through QR scans, instant access for any visitor with a phone.
Three.js for the rendering layer, giving us full control over the visual treatment of the cultural moments.

Hyperyond's solo R&D effort was figuring out how to make these three systems hand off cleanly, particularly for a nighttime outdoor environment where lighting, motion, and density all stress AR pipelines.

Field Work — Capture, Map, Calibrate, Test

Outdoor SLAM only works if the underlying spatial map is good. We did the field work end-to-end:

On-site capture sessions along the Taihe Lake trail, gathering the imagery and point clouds the Immersal map needs.
Map construction and tuning to ensure positioning lock holds under nighttime lighting conditions.
On-site positioning testing across multiple visits, validating that AR content registers correctly at every story beat along the trail.
Live deployment testing during launch and the Lantern Festival peak, with hands-on operational support.

Cross-Device Delivery: Phone + Rokid AR Glasses

The activation was designed to run on both:

Phone WebAR via 8th Wall — the volume channel, accessible to any visitor with a smartphone.
Rokid AR Glasses — Hangzhou-based Rokid's consumer AR glasses, integrated as a premium experience layer with the same content pipeline driving them.

Running the same content out to two very different rendering targets is the kind of architectural choice that quietly determines whether an XR activation feels future-facing or feels stitched together.

Public Recognition

Confirmed by official media coverage as Lishui Municipality's first XR cultural-tourism mini-program — a meaningful "first" in the regional cultural-tourism market.
Recognised with multiple regional industry awards in the metaverse and cultural-tourism categories during the launch year.

Technologies Used

Immersal (visual SLAM, spatial maps)
8th Wall (browser WebAR runtime)
Three.js (rendering layer)
Rokid AR Glasses (premium experience channel)
Mini-program access surface

Why It Matters

Cultural-tourism AR usually trades scale for fidelity, or fidelity for scale. The Taihe Lake activation refused that trade — anchoring outdoor experiences with proper SLAM mapping, delivering them install-free through the browser, and supporting next-gen AR-glasses hardware on the same backbone. That combination is what turned the activation into a regional first and into a piece of the Lishui cultural-tourism landscape that's still cited today.