Marathon Mural Brings 2019 Race Into Augmented Reality

New for this year’s race, the TCS New York City Marathon has commissioned a mural, giving passersby a preview of the liveliness the race brings out onto the streets every November.

The mural is located at the intersection of Wythe Avenue and North 10th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, just two blocks from where the Marathon course begins its approach toward McCarren Park. Designed by Adam Koon, the work depicts New York City life through local landmarks and other symbols of the city.

Some of the mural’s monuments you’ll see on the course, like the Verrazzano–Narrows Bridge that connects Staten Island and Brooklyn (Miles 1 and 2), the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower in Brooklyn (Mile 8), and the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan (Mile 24). Some of the landmarks are off the course, but stand as larger symbols of their boroughs, like the Unisphere in Queens and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza.

And then there are a few items on the mural you won’t see anywhere else, like a runner with a boom box for a head giving its fellow marathoners a thumbs-up.

But it wouldn’t be enough to simply paint a mural and let it sit there for all to pose for selfies. This mural makes use of augmented reality (AR) features through the TCS New York City Marathon App Powered by Tata Consultancy Services to give visitors a deeper look into the race—or at least, some fun facts and quick stats about it.

So, let’s get in to how the AR features work. Open the app, then expand the menu on the left-hand side and select Augmented Reality.

Don’t have the app yet? You can download it in the App Store for iOS and on Google Play for Android, or you can scan the QR code on the mural when you visit it.

Once you’re in the Augmented Reality section of the app, hold your camera up toward the mural and walk around to discover a few of the mural’s added elements. When you see a hand icon pointing up, tap that to display that part of the experience. Walk around to see the animation move dynamically, or tap the animation to expand the animation on your screen.

Here’s a peek at how it all looks:

But with all of this info, you might still be wondering: How do you get there to see it for yourself?

Via subway, you can take the L train to the Bedford Ave stop, walk west on North 7th Street to Wythe Avenue, and then turn right on Wythe Avenue until you reach North 10th Street.

For marathoners who want a warm-up for their Staten Island Ferry ride on Sunday, you can take the NYC Ferry’s East River route to North Williamsburg, walk east to Wythe Avenue (via North 5th or North 6th streets), and turn left until you get to North 10th Street.

But just in case you can’t make that trip out to Brooklyn—at least, not until you’re there during the race on Sunday—there’s one more place you can check out the AR elements of the mural.

The cover of the 2019 TCS New York City Marathon Program folds out to display a print of the mural in full, with the same AR functionality that you’d experience at the mural site in Brooklyn. All runners will receive a program when picking up their race materials at the TCS New York City Marathon Expo Presented by New Balance, so you can take the augmented reality experience with you wherever you go!