Announcements from SXSW & More
An influx of AR reports came this week from South by Southwest (SXSW). This massive annual event is based in Austin, Texas. It brings together creative minds from all sorts of industries to share ideas, products, and artwork. The festival hasn’t even wrapped up yet, but SXSW has delivered some of the most interesting developments we’ve seen for AR in 2019.
Bose Premieres Sound AR Hardware
BOSE unveiled a prototype of AR-enabled glasses – simply dubbed ‘Bose AR.’ These frames aren’t typical of how we’ve seen AR deployed before. Given Bose’s expertise in sound engineering, it makes sense that the company would choose to develop an AR experience reliant on audio rather than visual cues.
Users demoed the equipment by traveling down a specific route in Austin’s city center. Along the way, they were able to aim the glasses and double tap the frame to access sound bites of information of the places they were looking directly at. Bose intends to partner with companies like Yelp and TripAdvisor to bring this technology to life soon.
Dupont AR Shopping
We’ve seen AR in retail and e-commerce spaces for a few years, but Dupont is the latest manufacturer to reveal their augmented reality shopping experience. Along with strategic partners, they created an app that places copies of countertops from their Corian line in real spaces. While this approach isn’t groundbreaking, it reveals an important trend among big businesses. Since augmented reality brings digital rendering of products directly to a consumer, more and more corporations are choosing to adopt AR into their marketing strategies. AR makes instant engagement possible.
Augmented Sketches by Morpholio
Though not announced through SXSW this week, Morpholio debuted AR Sketchwalk. This drafting and design tool brings architectural drawings off the page and into the real world. Powered by Apple’s iOS software, AR Sketchwalk enables a user to map out construction sites with and then overlay the outline with blueprints or a CAD drawing. The AR experience lets you walk through designs that haven’t even broken ground yet, but delivers a sense of space that can’t be matched by just viewing a 2D drawing.
The InnovatAR Difference
Companies continue to look to AR as a resource to engage loyal customers, reach new audiences, and build support for their products, services, and other initiatives. However, of the examples above, two are app-based approaches to AR. And while apps currently dominate the market share of AR use, InnovatAR sees the future of augmented reality heading in a different direction.
We believe the future of AR is web-based. And we are building that future right now. Web-based AR experiences are available today – and deliver easily accessible and interactive experiences to users with no downloads required. View our work in our Portfolio or Contact Us to see how AR fits into your business strategy.
