You, and whatever you like to feed extruded bits of colored grain to, now have even more incentive to pour the tasty bits and a gallon of milk directly down your gullet. Nestle and Dassualt are teaming up to bring out a new augmented reality (AR) game based on the new computer-animated film from 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios.
The Rio 3D Augmented Reality game forces you to prematurely cut up your cereal box to access the AR marker which is then used a a controller for the game. All good fun. However, it hints at bigger plans for Dassault and their 3DVIA brand.
What’s Interesting
Strangely enough, this is only being targeted in non-English speaking countries around the world. This is also not Dassault’s first venture into consumer-focused AR gaming. They also teamed up Aurthur and the Invisibles producers to bring out the Minimoys AR game (also targeted at non-English countries).
Obviously, Dassault sees some potential for making their way into the Media and Entertainment industry via their 3DVIA technology. Modeling, rendering and animation are dominated by other companies, in some cases competitors, but none are going after the interactive, augmented aspects of entertainment more media companies are becoming interested in.
Instead of racing over to Latin America, Asia or Europe for a box of Nestle cereal you can download a hand card to do the same thing from here (PDF)
Oh, by the way, 3DVIA is already heavily embedded in the gaming industry with products like 3DVIA Studio and Virtools. The inclusion of Augmented Reality is just one additional aspect they’re incorporating to build in possibilities that could extend beyond gaming. They are also represented at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC). This year they teamed up with Intel at the booth and displayed games like Billions which was created with 3DVIA technology. See pictures of the show here.
