Tag: augmented reality technology

Augmented reality gives a taste of the extreme CN Tower EdgeWalk experience

| June 7, 2013

The latest smartphone technology is allowing people to capture the thrill with two feet on the ground.

One of the most extreme experiences in Toronto, Canada is the CN Tower EdgeWalk, which allows people to walk around the outside of the main pod of the tower on a 5 foot wide ledge without any safety barrier, wearing a harness and a tether, and augmented reality can help those who haven’t tried it to get a glimpse of how it feels.

The technology can also help those who have already gone on the EdgeWalk to relive the experience.

Naturally, nothing is the same as the thrill of the real thing, but the augmented reality experience is meant to help people to virtually transport themselves nearly two thousand feet up to the top of the iconic tower to see how things look from above. This experience was accomplished using BT/A Advertising, in conjunction with Astral Out-of-Home, Ad-Dispatch, and CN Tower.

The experience applies the universal OOH augmented reality app launched in 2013, called IRIS.

augmented reality CN Tower EdgeWalkThe augmented reality app is a joint launch from Astral OOH and Ad-Dispatch. The mobile marketing campaign is designed to be highly innovative and dynamic to allow people who are walking on Toronto’s streets to feel as though they’ve shot upward by hundreds of feet.

The experience provided by this augmented reality mobile marketing campaign is unique and surprisingly realistic. It was designed through the use of high resolution 360 degree photography in combination with computer generated 3D models, which give the user the impression that they really are there on the short EdgeWalk platform far above the city for the highest external walk on a building in the world.

According to the Astral OOH director of media, markets and innovation, Debbie Drutz, “Using transit shelter locations and IRIS Augmented Reality, CN Tower delivers a taste of the thrills that await visitors.” When a user points a device using the IRIS app at the poster on a transit shelter, the user will suddenly find him or herself on a platform at the top of the CN Tower, looking over the ledge for a 360 panoramic view of the full cityscape.

Augmented reality will make mobile marketing history with L’Oreal and CrowdOptic

| June 5, 2013

The companies are using the technology to demonstrate how it can generate a shared experience.

Before the end of June, the seventh annual Luminato Festival will begin in Toronto, at which time tens of thousands of people will be filling the Canadian city’s streets for music, art, sights, and now augmented reality.

The AR exhibition is going to be a first of its kind in the world and will be making mobile marketing history.

The exhibition is being held among the thrills of this world class city’s sights and is targeted toward smartphone carrying attendees who can download a free app so that they can aim their device at different locations around David Pecaut Square so that they will be able to view a “virtual gallery” around the location that cannot be seen without the device.

The augmented reality allows the gallery to be digitally displayed over the real background of the square.

Augmented Reality - L'OréalThis augmented reality exhibition will display layers of computer generated imagery overtop of the actual physical world view through the use of the app and the device camera. When attendees aim their smartphones at various parts of the square, they will be able to view various works of art that they can share, with which they can interact, and that they will be able to discuss with other people.

As more people begin to explore the various virtual pieces of art, a heat-map will be generated and identify where people are and what they are viewing the most. Once the event has come to a close and when the app is no longer being used, a new form of digital art will be left behind. This will be a new crowdsourced version of the well recognized Lancôme rose, which will span the entire size of the square. It will be a form of tremendous digital mural to which each participant will have contributed, simply by having used the augmented reality app during the exhibition.

This will mean that the augmented reality mural will become the first ever human heat-map logo in the world and could lead to new trends in artistic and interactive mobile marketing.