Content Area Guide (CAG)

The Conent Area Guide or CAG is a system to aid in the positioning of objects while creating Immersive Experiences. It allows you to create experience that will scale to different Immersive Spaces without the need to reposition objects.

Note: If you are designing an experience which will only be played in one Immersive Space there is no need to use CAG.

Example of CAG-I. Example of CAG-E.

Overview

CAG provides three different markers on that are displayed as an overlay on the Immersive Space. These markers are:

• Visible Region: Red
• Touchable Region: Green
• Room Corners: Blue

They can each be enabled or disabled individually from the Simulator Settings.

There are also 3 different variations of CAG which will be used depending on you Immersive Manager Settings. CAG-Exterior and CAG-Interior are used with 2D Camera Configurations and there is a CAG Regions utilised in 3D scenes.

Visible Region

The entire CAG surface (grey outline) represents the largest possible Immersive Space format (Wide). Spaces that are smaller in size will see a cropped version of this content. The Red Visible Region is the regions that is guaranteed to be visible. Therefore, all relevant visuals should exist within the area of a standard size Space. Everything outside of this is peripheral or bonus content - essentially an extension of the background. There may be scope to develop some Wide Space specific content that utilises the full extent of the interactive surfaces.

The red outline represents the maximum area that will be visible in a Standard Space.

Room Corners (Folds)

The blue lines are an indicator of where the corner of a room would be in the different sizes of Immersive Space. Sometimes referred to as folds because the CAG can be thought of as like a piece of origami paper with the potential to be folded in a variety of ways.

Backgrounds should be designed with folds in mind. Where there is a blue line there may be a corner in an Immersive Space. For most exterior settings this should not be of too much concern but certain objects will require more consideration to ensure they don't overlap a corner. A vehicle, for example, would be best be placed so that it does not overlap a fold.

Touchable Region

The green boxes specify the area in which all important interactivity should fall, meeting the following criteria:

• Visible in Standard, Wide Front, and Wide Spaces
• Reachable by the majority of users
• A safe distance from any problematic corners

CAG Types

When developing a 2D scene there are two types of CAG, Interior and Exterior. It is important that you choose the correct one as it will change the Camera Layout and alter what content is rendered.

CAG-E

When using CAG-E in a Standard or Wide Front Layout, the sides of the wider view are cropped. This works well for exterior environments.

The example below demonstrates how a background using CAG-E would break down in different Space sizes.

Wide

Wide Front

Standard

Limitations with CAG-E include; smaller areas in which to place objects that can not overlap folds and large areas of a wide Space being void of interactive content. Scenes like the above are not greatly affected by folds.

CAG-I

CAG-I treats the scene as three separate images instead of one spanning, providing a more even distribution of interactivity across the surfaces and preserving lighting effects. There sections cropped out from each surface in Standard and Wide Front Regions. This means that content in the centre of a surface will be centred regardless of the layout.

The example on the following page demonstrates the cropping of a scene using CAG-I - simply removing 25% from the left and right side of surfaces where appropriate.

Wide

Wide Front

Standard

One limitation to consider with this template is that animated objects that move around the room would not be possible. Movement would need to be constrained to the red boxes if essential, or the areas in between the red boxes if non-essential.