8i continues to blaze a trail through the immersive industry with its capture technology, cultivating partnerships with companies such as L’Oreal and even enabling legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin to give us an in-person explanation on how we’ll colonize Mars.
VidCon is a celebration of online videos from the viewers to the creators and 8i took to the annual conference to share that it is making the technology available to consumers by way of a new app called Holo, which allows them to take pictures and record video in what they term as 3D holograms.
To simultaneously promote the new technology and an upcoming film, 8i partnered with Sony Pictures to give users a hologram of Spider-Man from the Homecoming film to add to their pictures and videos. Holo adds the holograms to your image or video while you’re in camera view and they’re not just static, augmented overlays. Spider-Man, for example, can flip, facepalm, and pose for a selfie.
“People are creating, augmenting and sharing content like never before directly through the cameras on their phones,” says Steve Raymond, CEO of 8i, in the press release for the new development. “With Holo, we’re introducing a new way to create and express yourself using holograms of real people combined with the AR capabilities of smartphones. Until now, it’s never been possible to direct your own videos using recognizable characters and celebrities and we’re seeing lots of creative storytelling from Holo users.”
The partnership with Sony is just the beginning of their desire to have exclusive content available for the app. Holo currently includes content from Cosmopolitan (Magic Mike dancers) and holograms of various go90 stars and, if the app permeates throughout social networks, more big ticket partnerships are sure to sprout up in the future. Holo is available for free on the iOS Store for iPhone and on Google Play Store for Android devices.
