My previous review was on Magic Tatts – Undoubtedly one of the smaller AR apps on the market, so figured i’d move onto a brand of higher calibre – Dulux. They have an Augmented Reality application which allows people to digitally repaint their walls and even their entire house with AR – Ideal for redecorating, renovating, or for me – Knowing how my room would look in ‘Cotton Candy Pink’.
The App is called ‘Visualizer’, it’s free, and is available for downloading from the app store. It’s developed by a software company called String, who seemingly specialise in Augmented Reality and “Advanced Computer Vision Technologies’”. They won ‘Innovation of the Year’ with this nifty little app, at the ‘Digital Communication Awards 2015’. String are the big shots of AR, and have served many notable brands (Not all of which were specifically for AR). For that reason, although this is the first one of their apps i’m reviewing – It certainly won’t be the last.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv6Zl_ESq-c
Tracking Competence
Fundamentally, the tracking isn’t exactly blue-chip. If the wall isn’t evenly lit, the software won’t entirely change the current colour of the wall. To be more specific – When you select the wall you want to change, it only acts according to that color, not lighter nor darker colors on the spectrum, which shadows will have an effect on.
The application has two modes;
Live Visualizer – The camera is continuously running and you tap the walls you want to change the colour of.
Photo Visualizer – You take a photo of the interior or exterior, and tap the walls you want to change the colour of.
The photo visualizer is much more complete, considering it doesn’t have to take into account the camera tremble. I found that the live visualizer struggles to recognise the size of the wall, as it assumes that the wall is only as big as the screen of the camera you are pointing at, and as you pan further down the wall it will lose the added colour; as opposed to recognising that it’s the same stretch of wall and automatically coloring it. Likewise, it will occasionally fail to identify when a new wall begins, and it will consequently colour the other wall without the user necessarily wanting to select it. Ultimately, it needs to recognise alterations in lighting on a wall, which will (more often than not) mean a new wall.
Image Quality
For the sake of the analysis we’ll call the paint the image. Ultimately, it’s a bit rough around the edges, which I suppose doesn’t drastically hinder the functionality – As long as the bulk of the wall is your desired color, you will get the idea. In saying that, if there is a lamp or obstruction in the way, it won’t color a few centimetres radius of it. Lastly, if you pick a lighter color such as pink, it struggles to color the wall at all.
Functionality
Anyone who is half-competent with photoshop can do exactly what this app does – But it’s the ability to do so within a few taps which renders the magic of it. Also, Dulux deserves a pat on the back – Utilising the Dulux color palette within the app is great marketing, and launches them ten steps ahead of every other paint brand out there. This is merely a taste of AR’s potential, and I envisage that we’ll begin to see more practical applications like this, in the near future.
Unfortunately, the overall performance isn’t great, which doesn’t reflect the sleek, cutting edge persona of Augmented Reality. However, if you want to get a general gist of how the living room wall will look in lilac against grandma’s turn of the century book stand, it’ll do the trick.
The Genesis AR Blog 