At the CaT Conference this week, Bruno Uzzan, in charge of operations and business development for Total Immersion, presented one of the more entertaining displays of the afternoon with his overview of the company’s Augmented Reality endeavors. Augmented reality, he explained, ought to be about bridging the gap between the world we see on our screens and the physical world around us. And this can be achieved, he demonstrated, with the most ordinary of computer equipment—his presentation equipment consisted only of a mid-range PC laptop and web cam.
The trick to Total Immersion’s augmented reality strategy apparently lies in its proprietary D’Fusion software, which, when presented with a box of K’NEX blocks, immediately recognized the toy, and superimposed an animated 3D rendering of the finished model resting upon the box. While this was a great crowd-pleaser, Uzzan was eager to show off the more practical implementations of AR.
The most impressive, and most promising of these was an interactive brochure Total Immersion created for Nissan, which, when scanned by the same recognition software, rendered a 3D model of the car in question atop the brochure. Customers could then move their pamphlets around for a detailed view of the interior and exterior, as well as manipulate a paper-based interface on the brochure itself to swap colors and accessories. Although augmented reality could easily be squandered as just another tech gimmick, as virtual reality was in the 90s, Uzzan is determined to close the gap between real and virtual for both work and play, and the results so far are exciting.
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