Could Augmented Reality be the future? February 2, 2010
Augmented Reality or AR – yes another one of those new fangled techno-thingies designed to scare your parents!
AR is the latest innovation set to take the media and publishing world by storm. This clever idea is blurring the boundaries between the real world and the virtual, print and online. Many people currently are using the technology on mobile devices such as the iPhone. A user is able to view the real world through the camera on the phone but with interactive features appearing on screen, revelvant to exact area they are pointing at. Imagine you’re on holiday, and you need somewhere good to eat. The old fashioned way would be to simply look it up online with your phone, with AR you can just point the camera down a street and view reviews and information on screen, on the backdrop of the real world! This form of AR uses existing phone features such as GPS and solid state compasses.
My personal favourite use of AR is the way it is blurring the boundaries between print and interactive, in fact it may be something to help bring printed media back to life in some ways. Imagine a magazine or brochure, how else can you interact with it or than reading, or doing the things it asks you to read – for example an article about a new film review, you read it, you might look it up on their website to watch a trailer and eventually see the film. Resulting in a lot people bypassing the magazine altogether and heading straight to the internet. With AR a special marker on the page, consumers can open the magazine and when facing a webcam,can view extra features and interact straight from the magazine. Many car manufacturers have started to use the technology in their brochures (see the Mini above) where by looking at the back of the brochure via webcam, you can see a 3D view of the car in question, and turn it to view from all angles.
My personal favourite is the Toyota IQ AR, where the car reacts to how the brochure is moved and tipped around, whilst its animated, tip the page too far and it almost ‘falls’ off the page. On another page the car animates into an exploded view, with every part visible. It’s all very exciting stuff, how long before we don’t need to view it through a webcam…?!
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