By Jordan Newman, Head of Business Development and Marketing
Rollable TV’s, foldable smartphones, concept cars and even a redesigned plant-based burger — CES 2019 did not disappoint with new technology that promises to change how we interact with the world around us. And it was impossible to leave CES without hearing about how 5G will soon transform the world — allowing download speeds more than 10X faster than 4G and giving birth to the next generation of mobile experiences.
That’s just one of the reasons why all of us at Jaunt were so excited to show off our latest volumetric technology right on the back of our 5G activation with AT&T in November. At CES we showed partners our latest 3D assets captured by XR Cast — our volumetric capture solution. From amateur dances doing their best floss to football fans cheering on their favorite teams, our captures not only displayed the latest quality improvements but also the flexibility and usability of our captures. Using our demo app on an iPad leveraging ARKit, we placed our captures on all the flat surfaces CES had to offer — from poker tables to all-you-can-eat buffets to many (many) casino bars.
While markerless AR (or AR experiences that don’t require a particular image to trigger them) allowed us to place our captures all around the conference, we wanted to show how particular captures can be tied to specific markers. A couple weeks before the conference our team bought a bunch of magazines off the newsstand. We then trained our system to recognize each of these magazines and pull down different captures for each one.
Of course, markers don’t need to be magazines — they can be pictures, logos or even physical products. Particularly for brands, tying 3D content to products and logos is an easy way to launch AR experiences with great product attribution.
Finally, we know that folks come home from CES with pockets filled to the brim with business cards. So we knew we’d have to do something special to make sure ours stood out from the crowd.
Using the camera app, the QR code launches a webpage containing a volumetric capture of yours truly doing his best jig (and yes, those are pom poms…).
On the mobile webpage, viewers could add different background themes and see my capture from all angles. Clicking “View AR” allowed folks to see me in AR dancing right on my business card.
We know that getting folks to download an app can be challenging — that’s why we built a mobile web experiences that allows users to access our technology with their own device without downloading a thing.
If CES is any indication, the year ahead of us will be filled with technology that has the potential to inspire, entertain and disrupt. We look forward to showing you what we have in store.