Application of interactive 3D technology in the field of marketing and communication.

It’s a good week for 3D!

• ESPN announced their plan to broadcast (some) football games during this years World Cup match in 3D
• Avatar 3D already made a lot of cash and it seems that 4 out of the 10 3D movies last year were noted in the Top 10 best visited movies
• New 3D camera’s have been announced during CES
• New 3D displays, all stereo (with glasses!!) have been introduced during CES
• And of course: new 3D productions are announces, as well as new ‘conversion’  projects of existing 2D into 3D.

Reasons enough for a lot of press people to call, email and visit me this week to talk about the current 3D trends. Here in The Netherlands, football has always been the NR1 major sport, so the ESPN new’s about the World Cup in 3D was pretty exciting. This lead to some questions about how this will affect 3D penetration, at least in the Netherlands.

In my opinion we’re going to have a beautiful year for 3D, but it’s not going THAT fast. To really make a significant difference we need more than a handful of films and some football matches in 3D before 3D displays massively will be sold. So we will need more content, more shows, more movies, more 3D TV channels to really get this started. I concluded together with some journalists that the 2010 World Cup is just a bit too soon… for the 3D industry it would definetely be better if it took place just one year later or so.

However, I do believe we will see a quite big group of early adopters this year, everywhere around the world. Meanwhile we will also here internally do our R&D to make our autostereoscopic (no glasses…) 3D displays ready to also easily view the content as described above. At this point we can even already demo some of this.

The 3D train has departed!

Just a few days more and 2009 is history. It was a great year for 3D, with a lot of attention for all kinds of applications. From 3D Digital Signage to 3D Broadcast and 3D Cinemas. And 3D movie Avatar is closing the line with some great extra 3D publicity.

So, what will 2010 bring? First of all I think we will see more cinemas converted into 3D. Besides that the first serious 3D TV channels will startup during 2010, reaching out to the masses. And probably someone you know will buy a stereo TV in 2010, altough content is still limited.

The fact that big electronic companies like LG are now finally pushing 3D, will certainly help persuiding 2D content producers to convert to 3D as well. I think 2010 probably will be the big (positive) turning point for 3D. For some years I’ve been telling people that there’s a certain 3D Content / 3D Display Paradox: lack of 3D displays result in lack of 3D content and vice versa. This paradox might turn into an ‘upwards spiral’ now.

Last weeks’ news of the finalization of the official 3D Blue Ray specification will also contribute and is a very necessary condition for success. Now hopefully in 2010 all 3D Display manufacturers will adapt one 3D specification so all hardware and content is inter exchangeable, however, I doubt this will already really happen during 2010.

So… also 2010 promises to be an interesting year for everyone in the 3D business.

Have a great 2010 everyone!

Today I announce another keynote presentation which I will do at the International 3D Stereo Film
and Technology Festival 2009 in Liege (Belgium).

The presentation will be about the future of Digital Signage, a future with an important role for 3D and interaction in my vision.

The event takes place from 1-3 December in Liege (Belgium). My presentation will be Thursday the 3th around 13:30.

More info www.3dmedia2009.com

Many 3D artists and studio’s only use render engines that are not capable of doing real time rendering. This means that the time required to render a frame (for animation) takes more than 1/25 seconds. In many cases it even takes seconds or even minutes to render only one single frame, even with current CPU power.

However, both CPU and GPU power have increased significantly the last years, and with video cards like the GTX 295 there’s a lot of graphical power available. This is why our studio is shifting more and more towards real time 3D rendering. In my opinion real time 3D rendering is the future: get wat you want - instantly.

Of course it’s a complete different game to play, with different know-how, side effects and new challenges but obviously worth investing in.

At this moment we’re proving that real time 3D can now quality wise compete with “pre-rendered” 3D animation. Our R&D promises a lot for the future, and we’re already doing a lot of real time 3D projects since a couple of years and it’s getting more intensive each day.

The most important advantages of real time 3D might be:
- Enabling of interactive components
- On the fly change of settings or content
- No preview necessary
- Probably very efficient and quality improving for autostereoscopic projects

Today I decided it’s time to start some blog series about my vision that “3D is the Future”. I want to dedicate this article to persons and organizations that have big influence on todays and tomorrows world and that share my vision as stated above. B.t.w. it’s all in random order.

Bill Gates
Microsofts founder Bill Gates sees the future in 3D and is talking about this since years now. Microsoft is involved in 3D in different ways, from 3D interaction projects to the Virtual Earth web application, which will have more and more 3D in the near future.

Hollywood
When saying “Hollywood”, I refer to a number of companies and organizations, such as Dreamworkd, Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg etc. All are investing heavily in 3D, there have been some rumours that the prediction is, that by 2015 almost all movies will be produced in 3D. Furthermore, as many as 15.000 3D cinema’s are expected tot popup the next 5 years.

Google
It’s very clear that Google believes in 3D. Formerly their mission was to make all “information” on the web findable. Now it looks like their new ambition might be to make a virtual 3D version of the complete planet. More and more 3D is inserted in their Google Earth application, and complete virtual city tours are already available for some places. I think Google Earth will soon replace the “traditional”, text-based google.com interface we’ve been using for 10 years now.

Sony, JVC, Panasonic, LG etc.
Vritually all major electronical companies are releasing or announcing their own stereo 3D Displays lateley. Ofcourse all require the usage of 3D-glasses but still… It looks like, all agree that 3D is the next logical step after HD.

Sky TV
Few months ago Sky (UK) announced that they’ll start a new digital channel which is completely 3D (stereo). That’s an important step: content is king!

These are just some examples, I’ll try to extend this overview in the next months, because it’s really an interesting trend we’re seeing here.

Additions are always welcome.

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The message, I’m continuously spreading is summerized in the head of this article.

Basicly, to improve the ROI (the succes) of Digital Signage, the industry needs to adapt 2 things:

1. Make DS a 3D experience, as a result we can expect the number of viewers to triple (at least)
2. Make DS an interactive experience. This way we can keep the attention of the viewers 3,5,10 maybe even 25 times longer.

At the IBC, 2 weeks ago, I successfully was evangalizing these stept during my keynote about the future of digital signage. My estimation is that rougly 25% of the listeners came to me after the presentation because it was such an eye-opener for them. This tuesday I will continue my efforts by doing a presentation on the Marketing at Retail event organized by POPAI and in about 2,5 weeks I will give 2 workshops at the Visual Communication exhibition in Utrecht.

Hope to see you there.

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I have some questions for those of you, that are active in the Digital Signage market.

1. Do you think that the ROI of Digital Signage can be improved?
2. Do you think in order to do that, you need more than flat, simple ‘Flash’ commercials?
3. Do you think that appealing out-of-the-display-popping 3D effects will draw more attention?
4. Do you think that intuitive gesture controlled interactivity can make Digital Signage even fun?
5. Do you think that people like funny things and also like to talk about that to others?

YES YES YES YES YES, 5 times YES in a row, you’re going for the Jackpot!

I totally agree with you, in my opinon most of todays Digital Signage is even more boring than following the movements of a snail. The next months I will be doing performing some presentations to share my vision about this with you.

Agenda for the next weeks:
2009/09/11 Around 12:00 somewhere near the Digital Signage Zone at the IBC 2009 conference (RAI, Amsterdam)
2009/09/29 During the Retail-At-Marketing event, organised by POPAI
2009/10/14(or15) At the Visual Communication exhibition from easyFairs

Hope to see you there or at some other event.

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Triggered by our recent press releases, the IBC organization kindly asked us to do a presentation about 3D Digital Signage.

3D is one of the main themes of this years’ IBC. So, adding a presentation about the implementation of 3D in Digital Signage networks is indeed a good idea.

In my opinion the future of Digital Signage is:
1. 3D
2. Interaction

It’s very easy to understand why. The first one (3D) massively improves the attention and the second one (Interaction) will keep viewers attention long enough to transfer whatever you want to communicate (or sell).

So with these two factors added, Digital Signage networks might double or even tripple their Return on Investment.

As far as we know, we’re strange enough currently the only company that’s combining everything. The response we get from demonstrations is really amazing so appearently we do are adding new value.

More about this subject at the IBC. We’re planned to speak on Friday, September 11th around 11:00 AM.

The IBC takes place from 10-15 September 2009 in Amsterdam. Zero Creative shall demonstrate it’s 3DZignage solution on xyZ 3D Displays at booth DS6 within the Digital Signage Zone.

Looking forward to meet you!

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As you might have read, recently we announced the introduction of 3D Digital Signage software during the next IBC (11-15 Sept/Amsterdam).

This actually means that our company is back where it once started. When we found Zero Creative in 2005, one of the key points was developing a robuust Digital Signage solution using 3D. So it took us 4 years, to gather all information, knowledge, technology, partners etc to finally work it out the way we wanted it.

So, why is this so called “3DZignage” so unique and important?

The 3DZignage is becoming quite an universal platform which could also be applied in other applications than “normal” Digital Signage, for example for rental firms to quickly (and cheap) generate some catchy 3D content for exhibitions or so.

Within the system currently the following ways of content creation are possible:

1. Just upload your texts, images/video and combine with one of our 3D templates and you’re done: the customers’ content will become part of a 3D environment which is rendered real-time.
2. It’s possible for us to create custom content templates according to customers’ wishes, still for real-time purposes.
3. Use the standard “3d mediaplayer”-template to playback existing (or newly to be created) 3D Video’s, both in our xyZ 8 view format aswell as the 2D+Depth format (formerly used by Philips 3D displays until they stopped earlier this year). These are rendered 3D video’s that can be ordered at our content creation department or anywhere else.

The benefits of the system as we developed it can be described as follows:
It’s not only the 3D engine but it’s the whole way the platform is constructed that gives some big advantages above many other solutions. As far as the 3D concerns: being it “native 3D” it gives us the ability to render 3D real-time, so theoratical every content item can dynamically be placed in the “3d space” that our xyZ 3D monitors offer (up to apprx 80 cm out of the screen). And the whole real-time thing can save many costs because it’s not necessary to do computerrenderings that consume a lot of time. But this is not all. Apart from the 3D another important property is the template technology we use: in traditional media most templates only define a kind of visual markup. Our templates however, also can include (advanced) programming code. So for custom templates it’s possible to do the wildest things! Some examples of what we can do with our templates:
- make interactive templates: enable the viewer/user to communicate with the system (touchscreen, gesture control etc. etc. etc.)
- include real-time 3D object rendering (can also be interactively controlled), such as certain (optimized) CAD models of products or so
- it even could be a full (interactive) 3D environment itself (e.g. check www.zerocreative.com/Zcontrol, we could even include this whole tool within our universel 3DZignage platform…)
So anyway, the possibilities are quite endless (well, depending on budget ofcourse).

Will be continued…

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