Since we observe a rapid growth of 3D interactive mobile applications market, Smartphone.Biz-news.com wanted to know more about the technology behind it.
We spoke to Eric Bernard, CEO & Co-Founder of Visoglobe, the company that won the French National Contest for Innovative Companies for bringing innovative real-time solutions to 3D technology for mobile devices.
Recently, they released Visio Ski, an iPhone app that enables to navigate in 3D on the ski trails of 3 Vallées French ski resort.
Smartphone.Biz-News.com: Try to convince me I should not go skiing to Courchevel without Visio Ski installed on my iPhone.
Eric Bernard: Our app grants you access to a 3D and completely interactive map of ski trails. Geolocate yourself, wherever you are! Identify immediately the trail, the lift or simply the mountains near you.
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| Eric Bernard |
Visio Ski also makes your first rides in the resort easier by enabling you to bookmark trails or lifts, or even to share your GPS position with your friends.
Once installed, the application contains all the data necessary so you don’t need to use the network on site and thus avoid data roaming charges (except if you send your position by email) and get better battery life. Given that the data is embedded in the application, we recommend to install the application from a WiFi connection.
How the developing process of this app looked like?
We have made a partnership with the US company Intermap. They provide us the data, then we optimize it we combine them with the ski trail, lift, POI information, and we integrate those data with our application for having the full area in 3D with all the information.
The application is running on iPhone, and soon we will start the development for Android. Those two environments are from our side the most interesting for this kind of application.
Tell as a little about your real-time 3D engine, a core of your technology.
The Visioglobe Technology is a first life experience, which enhances the real world experience by providing the world in 3D on embedded devices with high detailed buildings and landmarks.
The world is enhanced with real time information of the surrounding environment, for example to find friends, events, restaurants, and other useful places of interest.
The background came from the aircraft simulation, and we have decided to port it on mobile phone for addressing the mass market
What is today’s biggest challenge for 3D real-time visualization for smartphones?
Have the better 3D chips, to be sure that the rendering is good and fast enough. It’s the reason why we have built strong partnership with hardware provider, like Imagination Technologies for the mobile, and NVIDIA Tegra for the automotive.
In the near future, in what kind of mobile devices and applications you think you could use this technology?
All the mobiles which have a Power VR from Imagination Technologies, and actually Imagination have been shipped in over 100 million consumer products. So all the smartphones from Samsung, Nokia, Sony, LG, HTC and Motorolas can receive our technology.
How will Google’s and Nokia’s navigations change the navigation, and 3D navigation, market? Have you already noticed any impact?
A lot! But it’s very good for us, because our market is in B to B and we provide 3D to the navigation and LBA application which didn’t have it. So for the moment all the mobile phone manufacturers, operators, and even Google could be interested by our application for having a very good 3D engine on mobile phone.
Having well equipped smartphones, do we still need PNDs?
No, because until recently the PND didn’t have a 3D chips embedded. And for the future, the PND market doesn’t seem as promising as the mobile phone market.
What are you presenting at this year’s World Mobile Congress?
We will present our application on the Imagination Technologies booth the Monday 15th of February, and Wednesday 17th of February. And full time with Navteq for presenting their last enhanced 3D city model at the Pueblo Español just above the Fira de Barcelona.
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