Instagram shirt becomes a wearable augmented reality filter

Scandinavian fashion retailer Carlings is launching a collection of augmented reality shirts for Instagram.

Carlings uses Facebook's SparkAR kit with the newly introduced "Target Tracking" for a T-shirt with an augmented reality effect: the Instagram camera recognises a logo on the shirt and calls up a corresponding AR filter, which is then placed on the otherwise white shirt.

With the smartphone camera, you can view the motif from different angles, photograph or film it and share it with the world. Thanks to digital technology, shirts with animations are possible.

Marker-based augmented reality is not a new technology. There have already been experiments with AR garments. What is new, however, is the widespread availability of fast, AR-capable smartphones, Instagram as a playback and distribution app and a digitally savvy target group that could take a liking to computer fashion - although it can currently only be discovered through the smartphone viewfinder.

Carlings uses the AR effect to suit the young target group for statements on climate change such as "I'm sure dinosaurs thought they had time too" and "Stop denying our planet is dying". The effect currently only works with the smartphone camera on the back.

Matthew Drinkwater, Head of the Fashion Innovation Agency at the London College of Fashion, sees Carling's AR collection as a further indication of the potential of augmented reality to establish clothing enhanced by computer graphics. "We are entering an era where a 'clothing update' takes on a whole new meaning," says Drinkwater.

Source: Mixed