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This is just a test/ mockup of an interactive 3d product display.

Virtual Shopping Malls?
Our research has shown that the idea of producing a 'virtual 3d shopping mall', such as you might expect in Second Life, has been tried many times in the last few years and has failed to take off. Customers will tend to arrive at your shop via Price Comparison sites/ Amazon/ Google etc. which makes the idea of navigating an avatar through a 3d shopping mall an irrelevant and irritating experience (technology for technologies sake, rather than looking at customer habits)

Virtual Product Displays?
Customers are much more likely to buy from a site that offers an interaction with the product. Would you buy from a shop with closed doors and just a serving hatch or one that welcomes you in and encourages you to the play with the goods?

Web 2.0 Shopping Malls?
Customers are much more likely to return if offered incentives e.g free and updated games/ movies/ chat-room/ news/ music/ etc. The idea is to recreate the shopping mall 'experience' and provide a web space to hangout and chat with peers, see the latest entertainment, listen to music, play games and catch up on related gossip/ news.

  

What next?
The character used here could be customized by the customer e.g to choose a male/ female character, change skin colour, change hair style, change character animation to walk/ dance. Using motion capture data for the models animations would improve the realism hugely (actually the human brain recognizes motion as more important than a still image)

Limitations?
Currently we are assuming the customer's computer doesn't have an Open GL (gaming) graphics card so all graphics are computed with the CPU (very slow in comparison but highly compatable). We can speed up the presentation below by making the 3D area smaller but also by optimizing/ debugging the java code (remember this is just a rough demo so we haven't had time to do this).

 

Interested?
If you are interested in discussing the use of a 3D product display, of any type, please leave a comment below or ring us on 01554 891057. Basic solutions can start from a few hundred pounds, adding our java applications to your existing website if only a couple of minutes work.