There has been a lot of recent hype about Augmented Reality in the trade. The latest buzz word on every experiential marketing communications agency tongue, you may be wondering what it really is and how practical and relevant is it for most campaigns?
To explain for those who haven't yet come across it, simply put, it involves a screen, a web cam and a consumer holding up a card in front of the screen. Instead of simply seeing their reflection as they would in a normal webcam scenario, they also see a product / motion graphic sitting on top of the card that they are holding. Further customisation enables the participant to change the colours or participate in a game or activity by moving the card (and therefore the product/graphic) around resulting in additional effects.
This has many possibilities and can add a really cool interactive edge to an otherwise relatively boring plasma or LCD screen. The reality, (however augmented lol) is that though this idea opens up a world of possibilities, the technical side of it is in fact very straight forward and not worth the hefty price tag that some suppliers have placed on the mystic service.
The geeky part: for a software programmer to create this what they need to do is first know the distance between each of the four corners of the card that the person is holding up, then ensure that when any four points with such distances are located, the predefined graphic is place to the centre of those four points. The rest is additional basic special effects. The point being that there is no new technology being used and it is a basic programming task. The only new thing is the application of the technology and the brand activation agency associated with it.
Here at Blazinstar Experiential we have 'technological wizards' we work with regularly and one of them created a very similar software for a customised photobooth that we built for an event series we created for 3 (the mobile brand). In that instance the software had to recognise where the person’s eyes were (by finding two small dark circles within x distance from eachother) and ensure that the persons face was placed in the middle of the photo. Not an exciting piece of software but from a technical standpoint, pretty similar!
In essence (especially given the climate) if you want to dabble with augmented reality, or any other interactive technology for that matter, be weary of super hefty prices because often the same thing can be achieved on a relative shoestring! Contact us for more info.
