We're continuing to explore ways to apply Virtual Reality to non-gaming applications. Our latest prototype is to expand Wealth Projector's Adviser Interface using a complementary Virtual Reality module for client-facing meetings.
The idea is to replace the 'let me turn my monitor around' or the 'let me sketch this on some paper' moment into a richly graphical, engaging Virtual Reality experience.
Check out video of the prototype below:
For the past six years, I've helped out at our community Art and Craft Festival. The logistics behind such a show are surprisingly daunting - hundreds of pieces of art have to be delivered, catalogued, tracked and (ideally) sold over the course of one weekend.
A couple of years ago I built a mobile website to help with this process. The website allows show coordinators to invite artists; artists to photograph (using their camera phone) and upload their art; the gallery team to arrange the paintings on walls using a drag-and-drop UI; and finally the sales team to track sales.
Another requested feature was to allow people to buy art online, before the show. But how to give people a good impression of how that art will look in their home? How to give a feel for the size of the art, and what colour walls it suits?
In previous years I solved this using stock photos of lounge rooms overlayed with simple CSS perspective transforms - to 'hang' the art on the wall.
However for the 2017 show I've upgraded the site to use the new A-Frame framework. I think this presents a great case study of using Virtual Reality for non-gaming. Virtual Reality excels at giving people a sense of scale, which (hopefully) will really help in deciding to buy art online. Art galleries are also a great application for Web VR, as paintings use only simple geometry which is easy for lower-end devices to handle.
Check it out at http://tinyurl.com/owps-art or see the screenshow below:
As a bonus, I've also Open Sourced the A-Frame collision detection component I developed to prevent the user walking through walls.
Metawidget development has slowed lately, thanks to two factors: the framework itself is very mature; and I've been consumed by my startup.
However, thanks to the Open Source community others have taken up the mantle. I look forward to integrating their work into the main branch in the future! For now, keep an eye on:
In addition, I'm still doing small changes and fixes as they come up.
