The brief
How can you let someone visiting a trade show experience the new interior design of a sales floor without actually standing in it?
That was the difficulty our client was faced with when planning their exhibition. Photos and renderings – maybe even animated – could be one way, but they can never demonstrate the scale and perspective you ideally want to show.
So the idea was to give the visitor something to really become immersed in.
The approach
It was clear from the beginning that we needed some kind of 360° experience , we just needed to figure out what the most suited technical approach was.
In consultation with the client and the different stake holders we decided on a 360° video production (as distinguished from 360° stills) and especially the Samsung Gear VR platform for the development of an interactive application to showcase the videos. This system is the most mobile and flexible concerning the devices and setup needed – and very reasonable priced.
The resulting videos should be implemented into the application as a virtual gallery. As usual, gaze pointing was the preferred interaction method, as it is very intuitive and user-friendly and no additional controller is needed, thus keeping the required hardware to a minimum.
(application preview, image quality compressed for website display)
The execution
The workflow for the project included most of the services we provide: general media consulting and technical planning, creation/conception, including app flow and UI design based on the client’s CD, some 3D data management/modeling (the client’s logo was re-created in 3D and placed in the 360° space), Unity software development, testing/QA, deployment and hardware setup, as well as general project management and coordination of the involved crafts.
For the 360° videos, we partnered once more with Prestige VR, a film production company we’ve carried out several projects with, specialized on creating 360° real life footage.
The overall time frame was four months from initial contact to delivery, including a preproduction phase of five weeks for the video production (with one day of shooting on location) and six weeks of software development.
The result
The package we delivered at the end of the project consisted of two Gear VR headsets with S7 smartphones, fully installed and prepared, ready to be used on the trade show. The main advantage of such a setup is that it can be used as a completely mobile plug-and-play system at any event.
The application is developed in a way that it allows filling the virtual gallery with additional 360° videos without the need of re-programming, thus keeping the required effort to only the production of more videos.