If Augmented Reality, Then Perform!

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.

 

metaio Is Fair

Just wanted to share the latest coverage from our technology fair this year. Of course it is not like ISMAR, but we had 180 guests from around 25 countries, 30 live-demos and a lot of interesting new ideas and projects coming up. Maybe see you netx year …

Augmented Kingdom

Once upon a time, there was this information kingdom, ruled by hype cycles and catchy videos. Speed was the currency, quantity was the drug and image was everything. It was the time of virtual birds, twittering the news and rumours in a 15 seconds of fame (and attention) pulse through the venes of the newswires. Some even called it a war when it came to a certain point where the world as it has been known was on it´s way to change. I mean, the way this world was seen. In these times even the most deliberate knights, the warhorses of this visual battle were forced to use the ultimate measure: a demo video !  (drum roll, rolling thunder, pathetic music). And this is the story I want to tell you today…

Functional Augmented Reality – A Classic

Hey, since the AR hype started way after we released this software tool, I wanted to share this classic application with you. As there are more and more augmented reality applications popping up, whith a functional approach (sometimes the execution is a little weak) this viewer should be named. Actually this movie is based on our good old interior design tool, where you can plan your living environment within a simple picture of your real apartment. But with a little effort we created the living movie …