Augmented reality (AR) is popping up everywhere these days – and it’s not surprising. Modern smartphones roll off the production line already equipped with the necessary technology for experiencing AR, and dedicated AR glasses and other tech are getting cheaper and better. Seeing so many businesses and other organizations using AR to engage with the public, you may be wondering if this is something your organization should also adopt – and if so, how?
There are numerous AR solutions available today. Each of them can deliver unique value, by boosting interaction, increasing awareness, and facilitating sales. But which AR solutions are the best fit for your business, and how can you leverage them effectively without breaking the bank?
The value of AR solutions
AR can bridge the gap between imagination and real experience. This is one of the greatest value drivers for AR technology today.
Education
One significant value source of AR solutions is when they’re used as a tool for educating the public. This breaks down into further benefits, depending on exactly how it’s wielded. As a purely educational tool, AR can be used as a metaverse classroom solution either as a standalone AR activity or as part of a broader metaverse program.
Marketing and Sales
As an educational tool, AR can also be used as an effective marketing solution. Considering the established role of social media influencers, it takes little imagination to elevate this concept with AR marketing solutions using holographic presenters who can ‘educate’ consumers about your products or services in an engaging way.
Using 3D content, your customers can also interact with and explore your products, try them on virtually, or take part in gamified brand experiences. Some AR solutions enable purchases directly from the AR environment itself, or are closely linked to sales channels.
Entertainment
It’s important to remember that AR experiences are fun and engaging. This is partly why they’re so effective as a learning tool – but also why they are so effective for marketing purposes.
People use AR solutions because they are enjoyable – and there’s plenty of space for pure entertainment in the extended reality space. Of course, entertainment can be used to ‘soft sell’ products and services too – but the focus of these should be primarily on the fun.
Social impact
Changing people’s minds isn’t easy. No number of words can persuade someone of a new perspective, but experiences can. Because we perceive AR as a real experience, it can be used to foster empathy and change behaviors. As a tool for social impact, the value of AR is strong.
Common AR use cases today
Augmented reality is used in more new ways every year. These experiences are becoming increasingly easy to produce and share with dedicated apps and AR sharing platforms. Here are some of the most popular use cases for AR solutions today.
Shopping assistance with AR
By leveraging the capabilities of AR for visualization, people can get guidance on purchases such as clothing, cosmetics, and furniture. AR solutions for shopping typically consist of dedicated apps for a specific brand or retailer. Examples include the IKEA Place app, and Amazon’s AR View which can compare multiple items of furniture at the same time. Several cosmetics brands have also launched their own AR solutions for shopping assistance.
Educational AR tools
By making abstract concepts more tangible and fun to explore, educational AR solutions can create high levels of classroom engagement. Students can explore new worlds, step back in time, and enjoy learning about the interior anatomy of living beings. These kinds of experiences can help students see the scale of dinosaurs in a real-world environment, and get to grips with mechanical processes like engines.
AR Games
Entertainment is a strong area of application for AR, because it can easily blend reality with fantasy creations. Games can also be used as an AR solution for marketing or educational goals, making these an interesting possibility for almost any industry. Most AR games are made for smartphones, but there are several made for games consoles like the Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch.
Virtual twins/strategic decision-making
It’s not all fun and games; AR is also being used to make strategic decisions in numerous sectors. Augmented reality (including Mixed Reality, or MR) is a convenient way to experience digital twins and other simulations. This makes it easier to visualize complex and interdependent processes, and outcomes of potential decisions. A big advantage of combining digital twins with AR is that it can be used side-by-side with the real objects or facilities in question, making them something that can be used ‘in the field’.
Advanced training in extended reality
With the ability to explore realistic 3D content, AR can be especially effective in advanced training situations. NASA already uses AR and other extended reality technologies to train astronauts, and these training sessions can cover numerous scenarios without putting real people or equipment in danger.
Unique AR solutions for distinguishing your brand
There are many more use cases besides these – including uses in industries like architecture, medicine, aerospace, and higher education, to name a few. AR experiences are now an area where organizations can distinguish themselves. Using a unique AR experience, you can engage people with your organization’s mission, brand identity, or co-opt them in product designs.
The costs of developing AR experiences are being driven ever lower, with shortcuts for 3D content creation (more about this below) and apps that make AR experiences easier to build. With so many tools available for creating your own distinguishing experience, the time to experiment is now.
Why not start creating your own experience? Fectar has created the Fectar Studio, which enables content creators of all levels of technical ability to start creating unique AR spaces.
The next phase: AR solutions moving to platforms
We’re now at a pivotal moment in the development of augmented reality. Today, most AR solutions are single experiences that require their own app or dedicated devices, but the ground is shifting.
As this technology matures, we’ll start to see more consolidation of experiences into a smaller range of unified systems. These enable users to experience multiple AR spaces with a single app or platform. The Fectar app is a good example of this – it’s essentially becoming a space for sharing AR content, just like the way people share videos on YouTube.
The movement towards platforms signifies the transition of AR into a ‘mature technology’. Now that the success of AR use cases has been validated, these solutions are expanding into more integrated experiences such as training platforms with multiple courses.
Once an ocean of disconnected AR technologies, these islands are becoming more connected and integrated with one another.
Let’s look at the best, most versatile AR technologies today, and how these can be used for many different situations and use-cases.
Examples of AR solutions with endless possibilities
Fectar Studio and Fectar App
The Fectar Studio is a professional application for creating metaverse spaces. The environments that Fectar Studio can build are suitable for both VR and AR. This means you can create experiences that are ‘portable’ to the maximum number of end-users. Don’t be put off by the advanced capabilities – this AR studio is suitable for novices too.
The companion to the Fectar Studio is the Fectar App, which enables easy sharing and browsing of AR experiences on the Fectar platform. With more than 6 million users already, this is one of the most popular ways to enjoy AR.
VR and AR training platforms
Both VR and AR are used in advanced training, such as surgical procedures or mechanical maintenance. Now, these are becoming platforms with multiple trainings available. In business, successful AR tools quickly move from ‘experimental’ to active deployments, and this is when they start to become more versatile, with more ‘stacked’ value sources added over time.
After all, once the company has invested in AR glasses, it is easier to add new content and experiences – and all of a sudden they have their own platform. DHL, for example, uses ‘vision picking’ to guide staff during the warehouse picking process, and Volkswagen’s AR platform helps repair technicians navigate engines and identify parts.
Several medical training platforms for VR have been introduced, including Osso VR, MetaMedics, and SynchVR. With VR becoming more ‘AR-like’ in recent years (e.g., pass-through cameras) the line between VR and AR training platforms will become less distinct.
NeRF
Neural Radiance Field technology (NeRF) is one of the most exciting AR solutions on the market today. Taking just a single digital image, AI can extrapolate the (most likely) entire 3D environment including views of an object that aren’t visible in the image. The possibilities are endless!
LiDAR scanning apps
Combining data from your smartphone’s camera and LiDAR scanner, you can quickly render a 3D model of an object, just by walking around it with your phone. Still almost exclusively available on newer iPhones, LiDAR is also available on some Android phones.
HoloLens 2
This newer version of the HoloLens has endless possibilities because the HoloLens platform is being aggressively developed as a mixed reality business solution. This means that multiple experiences, functionalities, and training sessions can be developed using one device/platform. Watch this space!
Don’t miss the boat
Augmented reality technology is developing at a rapid pace. AR has the largest number of users and potential users, as it can be experienced with practically any smartphone or tablet. Because it has the largest user group, AR will remain a dominant force in the metaverse space for many years. While it’s not wise to jump straight in with a massive capital investment and company-wide rollout immediately, it is wise to start now. Just start small and keep going.
Another consideration is that it’s smart to develop 3D experiences that have portability across multiple platforms. So, a metaverse asset developed for VR could also be experienced by someone who has access to an AR device. This versatility helps give your investment the greatest reach.
If you’re ready to start experimenting with the possibilities, then try the Fectar Studio. It’s easy to upload 3D assets, and create immersive metaverse spaces for meetings, training, marketing, education, or entertainment. Then you can share it with a potential audience of the 6+ million users of the Fectar platform, using the Fectar app.
