X-REALITY DISCUSSIONS SPARK DEBATE AT THE SYNAPSE INNOVATION SUMMIT

X-Reality, or XR as it is more widely known, is a phenomenon that is currently taking shape across the world. The underlying technology combines Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) into a unified and seamless experience that will allow people to interact with the world around them in unprecedented ways.

Just how important is XR and how will it affect you?

XR is currently shaping up to have the power to disrupt every technological medium on the planet over the next 10 years and is predicted to be a $20 billion industry. It will affect the way that you interact with everything.

Don’t believe us? Watch this video of how the retail industry is already figuring out ways to incorporate augmented reality:

Here’s a peek at what I’ve been working towards for the past few months. Introducing Retail AR, from Dent Reality. https://t.co/CpS0w3ZXYX pic.twitter.com/NZFZcjcQX1

— Andrew Hart (@AndrewHartAR) April 4, 2018

Essentially, XR allows users to interact with even more content than ever before.

XR in the Tampa Bay Area —
Haneke Design

Our own, Jody Haneke, was recently invited to speak at the Synapse Innovation Summit to talk about XR and how it will affect people from a technical perspective:

Jody has first hand experience with creating innovative marketing campaigns that use elements of augmented reality from projects he worked on at Haneke Design. For example, the One World Observatory Explorer iPad App was first pitched as a pure augmented reality app. However, when the Haneke Design team went to look at the Observation Deck during one of their New York visits, they found themselves in the clouds… literally.

The user experience in this case dictated that due to the number of days with poor visibility, instead of a pure augmented reality app, the Explorer App would actually benefit more from having a high resolution photo serve as the app’s screen as opposed to a camera view.

A perfect example of utility beyond novelty.

Haneke Design is currently looking into other useful functions to use augmented and virtual reality for our clients and has in-house developers researching the best use cases to bring a client’s dream to reality.

Other examples of AR/VR in the Bay — Marxent

Alongside Jody Haneke, on the XR in the Bay Area panel, was Joe Bardi, a Content Strategist at Marxent, which is another Tampa Bay-based company that utilizes AR and VR as a core part of their business model. His company uses augmented reality daily as a tool for furniture companies. The opportunities for augmented reality are endless in the furniture-marketing realm, as customers are now demanding to know what an item of furniture will look like in their home before they purchase.

Marxent uses not only augmented reality, but also is playing around with the concept of “diminished reality.” If augmented reality, in essence, means to add virtual objects to a place, diminished reality actually takes away objects from an environment. This is very important in furniture sales, because often the customer wants to know what their room will look like without something in it. When Ikea launched its augmented reality app to render furniture in people’s homes, the user often found that they had a “couch on top of a couch.” So by first diminishing the appearance of the existing reality, the user is able to get a much clearer understanding of the look of their room.

What’s Next?

Google is already on board with Augmented Reality and has made it a priority to expose AR to the right people, and this includes kids. With Google Expeditions, educators can now bring virtual lessons into the classroom without the need to actually book expensive trips to foreign museums. How’s that for innovation?

With the onset of virtual and augmented reality tools becoming more available to developers like AR Kit, expect the next ten years to have a lot more applications that leverage this technology.