Taking your wild sneaker ideas from thoughts to display just got significantly easier. A Nike store in Paris recently unveiled a new device which allows customers to customize sneaker colors and see them projected on the sneaker, in real time, using augmented reality.
French immersive technology company SmartPixels installed two augmented video-mapping devices to project in the Nike Store on the fashion hub of Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, France. Customers can customize sneaker colorways on the tablet attached to the video-mapping devices using the NikeID online service. SmartPixels connected the video mapping with NikeID’s configurator so customers need only place an all-white sneaker in the device and they will see the colors projected on the sneaker, in real time, as they select them on the tablet.
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Even though Nike’s online tool for customizing hundreds of sneaker models is being used, the number of sneakers you can customize in augmented reality is limited. Customers at the shop are only able to customize AirMax, LunarEpic Low, and Cortez sneaker models. When it is not being used the machine turns into a glorified shoe display, flashing different color schemes on the sneaker.
Nike has slowly been testing how augmented reality can help customers. Last year, the company filed a patent application for an augmented reality system that helped people reach their exercising goals. In the system, “a virtual representation of that user’s performance [is] to be displayed during a future exercise routine to motivate the user,” according to the patent filing.
Nike has imagined a future where customers could 3D print sneakers from files sold by the company, and the firm recently proved that sneakers tying themselves is more fact than fiction. Makes you wonder what other pieces of the future the crew in Beaverton, Oregon is designing.
