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 The Sundance premiere of "Marjorie Prime," a film starring
Hamm as a hologram character, gave virtual reality (VR) startup
8i the chance create the 'HoloHamm,' an AR hologram of Hamm to
drum up buzz for the movie.
Viewers pan a mobile device across a room and Hamm will appear
on their screens as if he is in that location, and interact
using pre-recorded phrases.
"This really opens up lots of promotional opportunities in
entertainment," said Linc Gasking, 8i co-founder.
Niantic Inc's Pokemon Go mobile game became the first mass
market adoption of AR last July. Players used their mobile
phones to capture animated characters that appeared in real
locations.
Unlike VR, where headset users can watch a 360-degree story, AR
renders virtual images over real life settings and can be viewed
on a smartphone other device.
Tech advisers Digi-Capital issued a forecast this month that the
AR market would be $83 billion by 2021.
The Hamm hologram was created in a few hours using cameras to
capture the actor in 360 degrees, Gasking said. It is more
cost-effective to create than VR because it layers digital
images over a real life set, as opposed to creating an entire
virtual 3D world.
The 10-day annual Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, has
featured VR for the past five years at its New Frontier
showcase, where independent filmmakers have created 360-degree
stories viewed using a headset, like Google Cardboard or Oculus
Rift.
When Pokemon Go became an instant hit, New Frontier programmer
Shari Frilot, who spent two years putting the AR showcase
together, said "I thought this is definitely the year to do this
because people will be looking for AR."
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"Pleasant Places" digitally layers images of Vincent Van Gogh's
legendary Provence paintings over landscape videos. "Full Turn" sees
two tablet screens spinning together to create a 360-degree animated
sequence.
"Journey to the Center of the Natural Machine," by AR headset
company Meta, allows two people wearing headsets to view and
interact with the same experience through the human brain. The
headsets feature transparent visors which become the screen.
The company wants to create education entertainment pieces, said
Daniella Segal, Meta's head of experiences.
The Meta 2 headset is priced at $949, a third of the cost of
Microsoft Corp's $3,000 Hololens headset, and is aimed at developers
to create applications.
"You can take something that may feel very cutting edge and very
technological and make it something that every person can find the
value in," Segal said.
(This version of the story corrects Gasking's title to "co-founder"
from "founder and president" in paragraph 4. Corrects hologram time
to "a few hours" from "five days" in paragraph 8 and changes process
to "cameras to capture the actor in 360 degrees" from "360-degree
photographic technology.")
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by David Gregorio)
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