As we approach the end of the year, it’s time to reflect on the last twelve months. It’s been an exciting year for Visualise with the studio producing an amazing spread of immersive content and experiences.

The team has also had great fun keeping up to speed with all the new technologies (hardware and software) that seem to be launching with every passing week, many spawned from AI’s tidal wave.

Here are our top picks from 2023:

Van Cleef & Arpels In-Store AR

Starting with WebAR, one of our favourite projects this year was for the incredible, high-end Parisian jewellers, Van Cleef & Arpels. It was a joy to work with a brand that whole-heartedly embodies beauty in design and excellence in craftsmanship. And the Visualise team certainly delivered, showcasing the detail and wonder of the unique Lady Arpels Heures Florales Cerisier watch in its very best light.

We built the watch from scratch in 3D, working with detailed photos and reference images. We even rigged up all of its moving parts to demonstrate the watch’s unique design and time telling mechanisms to the viewer.

We now have the ability to offer a ‘try on’ of the watch and other jewellery in the WebAR platform so keep an eye on our newsletters in 2024 for the next instalment.

More info on the case study page here.

NBA Selfie Experience

We’ve also had great fun working with the NBA to create an out-of-home selfie experience on a scale never seen before! Celebrating the Dallas Mavericks visit to Madrid, we invited fans to ‘become part of the Dallas team’ and see themselves on a giant billboard situated on the approach to the stadium.

A 5-storey building wrap invited passers-by to scan a giant QR code, take a selfie and then hold their phone up to the poster to see themselves 4 meters high in amongst the Dallas superstars. Fans were then invited to log in to the NBA ID and share the picture on social.

For an outdoor campaign, engagement levels were through the roof with 1 fan in every 15 interacting with the experience on match day!

More info on the case study page here.

R&D – AR Motion Parallax

We’ve been enjoying using AI in a number of different ways for producing immersive content. One example example in augmented reality is ‘AI powered parallax’ where we use AI to pull apart the components of an image and fill in or interpret what would have been behind the image. With these complete layers we can deploy spatial depth to deliver a simple but beautiful AR effect.

Here’s a demo we created earlier in the year featuring the legend Michael Jordan and ‘that iconic gravity-defying leap’:

It’s also been a big year for visual effects (VFX) with loads of content released on social media through fake out-of-home campaigns and clever perspectives through 3D anamorphic billboards.

There was no holding back the Visualise VFX team this year as demonstrated by some of their amazing R&D projects.

Fake Out-of-Home (FOOH)

Check out a chance encounter with King Kong here:

Or see how the ‘spiderverse’ visited Visualise HQ with ‘glitching’ objects magnetised to the outside of our offices.

Whilst these look great as recorded experiences we believe that there’s an even greater opportunity to develop these as real-life augmented reality campaigns that audiences can enjoy in person and share on social through. User-generated content is alway far more authentic and credible.

3D Billboards

Here’s another project where we took over Piccadilly Lights to showcase an ‘out-of-this-world’ animated experience of the Visualise logo to the visiting public (in our dreams…).

What is fascinating about these 3D billboards is that they are based on perspective and optical illusion principles first seen in Ancient Greek architecture and were also famously demonstrated in a created image in Holbein’s 1533 oil painting, ‘The Ambassadors’.

One of the unique offers we bring clients is access to our own amazing 360 camera systems, a world-class crew and an unrivalled quality of 360 production.

Bentley Motors – Hosted 360 Virtual Tour

This year we worked with Bentley to launch their groundbreaking 360 virtual tour system. Each virtual visit is hosted live by a real Bentley tour guide based in Crewe, UK. The platform allows you customers to virtually explore the factory under the guidance of their experienced hosts.

The system was designed and built from the ground up by Visualise developers, to allow for multiple simultaneous users, host control or customer control, embedded video conferencing tools and a custom booking system.

The 360 tour has now been launched in 6 language versions and is in daily use by the Bentley team.

Which brings us, last but by no means least, to Mixed Reality.

2023 has seen a significant game-changing moment in the immersive sector with the arrival of mixed reality (or as Apple would prefer to call it ‘spatial computing’).

To be fair, mixed reality has been around for some time but the hardware to experience it has either been unaffordable for the average person (Magic Leap at £3,300-£5,000) or not up to scratch.

Then came Meta Quest 3 launched in October. A more affordable, highly specced headset offering tons of content at a still high but more reasonable price point of £480.

With Apple’s Vision Pro launching next year, it’s a very exciting time for us immersive content creators as the industry players and brands in general, will be looking to leverage these unique and often mind-blowing experiences for consumers.

R&D Mixed Reality Art Gallery

In the last few months we’ve been playing with Quest 3 mixed reality creating a range of experiences. One experience allows people to place beautiful digital artworks around their own space. Taking high res scans of each of Van Gogh’s Sunflower paintings, we used AI to interpret the images and build 3D reliefs of the brush strokes for added realism. We worked up the models of the frames and created a platform that allows users to ‘hang’ the virtual paintings on their walls at home.

When you approach each painting, an audio excerpt of Van Gogh’s Great Grand Nephew, Willem Van Gogh, describes that painting, its origins and how it differs from the other famous Sunflower paintings.

We see a world in the not-so-distant future where we will be able to purchase these digital artworks for a fraction of the physical value and hang them on our walls, to admire them at our leisure in mixed reality with educational tutorials to match. Anyone will be able to curate their own world class art exhibition in their own living rooms, anywhere in the world making art truly accessible to all.

Visualise are pioneers in immersive content production and delivery.

We work with leading agencies, studios, brands, media owners and artists to bring creative initiatives and ideas to life through high quality immersive content and delivery. If you’ve got an awesome idea that would benefit from some VFX, AR, VR or MR magic in the new year, drop us a line and let’s talk.