Written by Namanh Hoang | 11 November 2009

With all this hype about twitter, one really underrated technology advancement is augmented reality. The most popular applications of this thus far has been primarily in viral campaigns and toys such as those popularized by the new Avatar Movie action figure toys which come with an i-Tag. If you don't know what augmented reality is, its basically involves overlaying digital graphics or data over real-time actions or objects. The Avatar toy example allows users to hold up the i-Tag to a webcam while on the Avatar toy site and then a 3D model of the toy appear on the card in your hands. It allows you to turn the 3D object around in real time and even interact with it such as pushing virtual buttons on the card to initiate actions such as melee or firing actions. However, augmented reality isn't a new concept, in fact it's been around for years, primarily by the military for devices such as H.U.D. or eye wear.

Here at CRISP, one of our co-workers Matt brought in an Avatar i-Tag which we tested out but much to our amusement, as an experiment, we wanted to test how the i-Tag was being tracked by the webcam, whether there were hidden identifiers like patterns or codes, so we took a photo of the i-Tag with an iPhone and tested it out to see if the web program would identify it just as easily. Much to our surprise it did! Seems like the Avatar image recognition isn't very complex, in fact we do most of the work by identifying which i-Tag we are holding up as opposed to it self identifying the i-Tag on its own with no assistance. We captured the experiment here:


This opens up a huge array of future marketing possibilities. We imagine some day seeing i-Tag markers as a common feature of any online product, allowing users to print or capture an image of a i-Tag reference and then easily displaying it on their i-Tag viewer. Imaging being able to preview the product you are interested in, in real-time, turn it around, even perform minimal functions like turning it on or playing videos within the 3D object. Shopping for complex items such as cars could be made simpler by allowing users to examine the car in detail, opening and closing doors and trunks, exploring the interior features such as dash and pulling in and out cup holders. Augmented reality will be the next evolution in shopping and will revolutionize the web as a platform for marketing.