Augmented reality is the currently thought to be the “Next Big Thing” in technology. Many large companies including Google, Facebook and Apple are already developing AR products and now Prezi has joined the list with augmented reality presentations.
So what exactly is an augmented reality presentation? Prezi has published a very short landing page together with a video example, however it might not give the best overview of the concept. It’s a rather boring 15 minute video (not the content, but for showcasing Prezi AR 🙂 ) so we thought to explain this Prezi AR idea a little better:
What are AR presentations and who needs them?
Imagine that you need to present someone an overview of a report that includes 25 pictures and a few graphs. The only problem is that the other person is on the other side of the world. How would you arrange this meeting? Decide to make a quick Skype call, but where do you send the pictures or other content? Probably as a separate email, and during the video you must constantly reference to a piece of content or page number in some PDF file.
What if all the content would be right in front of your eyes on the screen, for you and for the person you are presenting to? No need to minimize the video tab to go browsing in your computer. Pictures, text or even videos inside your video. You would be inside your Prezi – there is no defined slide path or order to follow, click with your mouse and and zoom into any topic that you need to present.
So essentially what is an AR Prezi presentation? It’s not rocket science, it’s basically a simple Prezi presentation with the background image replaced with a live video, for example your webcam footage. You can film yourself and overlay a Prezi presentation on top of that video feed. What’s the use of that? Well it’s definitely not meant for every regular presenter, but for a specific group of people who constantly need to present remotely.
It’s a good way to show yourself on the camera and present your materials at the same time. This way it will feel more like an interactive conversation .It will likely be most often used in business conferences, pitches and also in education, for example for presenting your research findings in an ecourse. You can talk to someone one-on-one, or present to a group of people at the same time.
Will AR presentations be the next big thing or will they end up in the list of most useless things ever invented? It’s definitely a cool idea and we like the concept, but let’s see how it takes off.
How to make augmented reality Prezis yourself?
Prezi has not announced any specific dates for the release of the AR presentation technology yet, however if they have already showcased it live on a TED speech, then we might guess it is very close to being opened to the public. The technology already seems to be working and our best guess is that augmented reality Prezis will be accessible to everyone before the end of this year. Will this be a feature for all Prezi accounts or only paying customers? We’ll just have to wait and see, but once it goes live, we’ll publish another blog posts explaining all the details.