Virtual Reality Takes a New Direction

There are new ways of reaching our users released everyday on the web. Developers mixing talents with videographers, photographers and programmers have made surfing the web sometimes feel like a “webcation”. You hear about this technology a lot of times referred to as “Augmented Reality”.

The use of augmented reality in advertising was novel in February, when General Electric incorporated it into its Super Bowl campaign to demonstrate its Smart Grid technologies. Since then, a number of other executions have occurred, the latest being Wal-Mart’s Your Zone 3D, which aims to get the company’s new line of furniture in front of teens and moms.

Launched in mid-July as part of a campaign that includes TV, print and banner ads, consumers are invited to visit the site and flash a marker in front of their Web cams to see an AR show that incorporates animated images of Wal-Mart’s new furniture into a virtual room environment.

Visitors see different combinations by rotating the marker in front of the Web cam that shifts the scene in the room to show the furniture from different angles. “You tilt the room left and right and the skateboard at the bottom of the page moves along with the momentum of gravity,” said Brett Bagenstose, creative director at Neo-Pangea.

The AR scene was created using 3D models of the furniture that were animated with 3D modeling software and rendered with Flash and Papervision.

The need to showcase appeal to users online is an ever evolving discussion in the tourism world. Destinations often have to develop a virtual reality in order to more accuratly showcase the area to users who have never visited. The technology being developed with fortune 500 companies such as General Electric and Wal-Mart is a smart direction to reaching consumers online in a heavily competitive market.

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