In the last months I have seen so many AR “campaigns” that I can not list them here – anyway there might be a list with the top 10 top 50 lists out there. Quite a few gave me “kinglike content”, “a unique (gaming) interaction / sharing function” or “at least a stable and robust AR product experience”. Thus I wouldn´t have a too long list because most of them are underperforming in some or all the essential and crucial criteria a good AR marketing measure is made off. And last but not least: the optical reference is created especially for the microsite. It´s an extra piece of paper! I think, that as long there is print out there – and this will not change too soon – we can enhance existing products, flyers, books, magazines or whatever with an augmented reality experience. On top. You should use it to connect print products with websites and have elements for conversion. Well, you need a good feature tracking for that, unless you don´t want barcodes as a full page design element. (Of course I do exclude putting the print reference ALSO as a PDF on the site, for the online-only people.)
But back to the technical part, that´s more our playground… Please, and I mean, PLEASE, consider Shockwave the next time you are selling web based augmented reality to your customer! You have a brilliant, native renderer. You can create appealing, high-resolution content people are willing to see, just like a quicktime, that is clicked, although people have seen a movie before (don´t come with that novelty-only approach, AR is a medium, nothing more, but nothing less). You have all the capabilities of the Director and can get in physics engines, your own game scripts or all the other existing Xtras. And most important: the application will perform well. There´s hardware rendering for smooth and high-speed and there´s a stable tracking. The engine won´t moan, it will purr. Compare FlashAR with Shockwave AR and you will know, what I mean.
For your evaluation I can provide you with the latter technology, as a movie directly here and as the tool, right here.
I have to disagree with your point about Shockwave, although I know that we all pump up our own tech on our blogs, so my comments should be taken with a grain of salt too.
Shockwave is a dying web tech. Only about half of internet capable computers have Shockwave already installed, while almost all of them have Flash (about 86% have Flash 10). User penetration is the #1 thing CMO’s care about. Plus, when Flash 10.1 comes out (soon, hopefully), it will support GPU processing. Already, better Flash 3D engines are coming out too. I had the chance to play with Yogurt3D, and it’s delivering Shockwave quality content.
I also predict that within the next 6 to 12 months there will be an open source markerless option for Flash as well. Besides, IMO, the real power of web AR is bringing the user in with mocap and body recognition.
Hello Blake,
thank you for your reply. And you are right, penetration is very important. But our data (real statistics, jump off rates etc.) tells us, that those users not belonging to the 50 something percent with shockwave already installed, click on the installing button, because the sender is Adobe. Most of the home users don´t care about Flash or Shockwave or another Java update. At the end, we reach the same penetration level like Flash! I will not comment on your polemic dictum about “dying techniques” by the way. Still penetration is not everything. So, untill the (already released!) markerless tracking of FLAR and the rendering is so weak, the Shockwave implementation offers the best deal. At the end, you gave me a deep forward pass: anything else but marker recognition works already very well with our yet existing tracking technology…
I’d like to start by saying that in no way do I mean to belittle your tech. I stated in a post on my blog a few months ago that you have a leg up on Total Immersion in that you use Shockwave and not a proprietary plugin anymore. With junaio, I think you’ll have a really good chance of stealing the thunder from Layar. I also saw the Lego installation at the mall. It was awesome!
That being said, I still disagree with your assertion the Shockwave is the way to go.
First, as to your statement that most people will click to install Shockwave. I’m sure they do, but WHO is going to these sites in the first place? Right now, most people out there who aren’t twitterphiles, don’t know what AR is. Almost every time I talk to someone about AR, I have to explain it from the ground up. So, looking at your average user, who thinks that Yahoo is their browser (it’s true), and has no idea what AR is, they’re not going to be as quick to install ANY plugin, regardless of who it’s from. When AR starts to be widely known, and gain more users, this will be a much bigger issue IMO. Remember, every new Mac comes with the latest version of Flash preinstalled.
Also, right now, while most AR executions are eye candy, you’re right that it matters who has the most detailed models. Thing is, that AR is going to have to get beyond that if it’s going to go anywhere on the web. This means that AR apps soon will have to utilize the functionality of full RIAs to justify their existence. Flash has the most vibrant open source developer community of any environment on the web. A developer can find source to just about any specialized task needed. Also Flex’s complete, built in REST support makes connecting to almost any existing web API super easy. There are ways around this in Shockwave, but who want’s to go around the issue when another solution has it built in?
Now, about markerless AR. This is the major leg up that your platform has on Flash executions, but for how long? Already I’ve found several examples of people doing basic markerless AR in Flash. It’ll probably only be a matter of months before there’s an open source library, since at least one of the “first step” examples I saw was already open source. I’d like to go into detail about my own work in this area, but my boss would kill me.
Honestly, I haven’t heard of anyone, besides small time web game companies, asking a developer to build an application in Shockwave in years, and you couldn’t find an job posting for a Shockwave Developer to save your life. Also, Adobe is putting their full weight behind Flash as essentially being their official language for all platforms, including mobile. This is why I stand by my statement that Shockwave is a dying web tech and that Flash is the way to go for 99.9% of interactive web apps.
But, once again, don’t think I’m knocking metaio. I think you’re 100% right about every other platform.
Hello Blake,
I am not thinking that you are knocking metaio. No worries. And you are right, when you are pointing to the fact that Director does not have the future, support and user base Flash for example has. But nevertheless, we evaluated different web technologies regarding their capabilities for doing AR, but at the moment Shockwave is simply the only one that offers the according performance both in terms of rendering and quality markerless tracking. This might change in the future and once Adobe brings powerful 3D rendering (GPU based) into Flash everything might be different again. For now, we have a state-of-the-art AR Xtra, which we offer to partners and developers able to do lingo or java script and that´s all it is about. We have to serve the requests now and want to deliver the best quality now. That´s all. And everybody who is developing a concept for a customer now, should consider to evaluate the Xtra now. If not, we will see even more and more weak executions in the meantime.
I’m interested in what you specifically mean by “weak executions.” If you mean graphics, IMO, weak executions have almost nothing to with graphics, but a lack of interactivity. Tech blogs, the people who get the message to the masses, are already labeling executions without interactivity “gimmicky,” no matter how pretty the graphics are. I’ve even seen negative blog posts about the Esquire spread, and it’s by far the nicest graphics oriented AR yet.
My point is that the “wow” factor when it comes to putting models in 3D space is going away fast. Pretty soon absolutely nobody’s going to care if your 3D model has 10k or 2k polygons, but what practical purpose the application serves.
nice article but its not easy to follow tech about 3d ..
i love to read tech blogs because i am a technology addict, always looking for new hi tech stuffs ,
reading tech blogs to keep me updated on technology is what i do daily. i am a tech addict ;,~
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