Virtual reality used to boost tourism trade
One Fat Sheep, a digital solutions company, is creating some of the most interactive 360 video in the world.
Managing director Sebastian ‘‘Bazz’’ Deans, said their 360 footage of Hong Kong was part of a partnership with Air New Zealand and tourism company Southern Discoveries, as part of a larger roll out of travel destinations around the world.
The company is creating a platform off the back of the project, that allows clients to manage the environment interactively, said Deans.
One Fat Sheep works in a field thought by tech giants as the first stepping stone to the future: augmented, virtual, and mixed reality. Research firm Global Market Insights, estimated the augmented reality (AR) industry would be worth $165 billion by 2024.
One Fat Sheep created an AR
game on top of a pizza box that helped Hell Pizza sell $2 million worth of pizzas, put former Prime Minister John Key into a field of virtual sheep at the TRENZ conference, and created AR apps for ASB and Red Bull. Its Red Bull Drift Shifters AR game got to number one in the app stores across iOS and Android after rugby player Shaun Johnson endorsed it. They have offices in Melbourne and Auckland, but compete on an international stage.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said at a tech conference panel last year that one day humans will wonder how they ever lived without AR.
‘‘I do think that a significant portion of the population… will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day.’’
‘‘It will become that much a part of you,’’ said Cook.
The hardware of AR is constantly changing, One Fat Sheep creates realities on different technologies every six months to a year.
‘‘It’d be great to know what’s next, but that’s one of the key challenges we love.’’
He expects Magic Leap’s lenses, which superimpose 3D objects on top of real world objects, to be a big technology in the future. The secretive Florida start-up has been developing the lenses for years, but when they will launch is a mystery.
The future of mixed reality, which merges AR and VR technology, could look like a factory staff member learning to use a complicated piece of equipment by having parts of the manual projected onto real world objects, said Deans. He also expects artificial intelligence to have a large role.