Are VR and AR useful for wine business?
There’re two digital frontier in the next future, Augmented and Virtual Reality, used in many way in industry, research, surgery, business and advertising.
Let’s see their differences and how they can be used in the wine business.
Reality, Augmented or Virtual?
In a few words, AR is one ore more informations added to a real view, using a viewer like the smartphone camera or showing information over a real image (like in surgery, for example). With AR you aren’t isolated from the real world, you’re just looking at it with news and informations appearing when you fix your eyes to an object.
The HUD, Head-Up Display used from fighters pilots, is a good example of Augmented Reality.
VR instead isolates you from the surrounding world; you can image to be at the see also if you are in your house, or under the see looking the fishes, or over the Moon surface; when you turn your head, the landscape turn with you.
VR needs visors like Oculus Go or Google DayDream, insert your smartphone into them and play the app.
The Ready Player One movie is the best example of Virtual Reality.
Well, being so differents, these two technologies have be used in differents way.
How can be they used?
Augmented Reality is a good way to explain to visitors in a wineyard what they are looking about; they can see the vines through their smartphone and a dedicated app will show them the name of vines, their age, what kind of wine that vineyard produces.
People can read info about the soil, its geological history and its texture, little text labels with a link to more informations. Into the cellar they listen the words of winemaker and look the barrels, and other news shown on their display. Simply, they have only to frame the barrel, the vine, the bottle.
And, of course, this can be used in a market store with info about just the bottle they want.
Virtual Reality is better to make know the place where a vineyard is, showing the work of winegrowers among the rows, also in the ancient time. The viewer will have the feel to stay in the middle of the action, listening the farmers’ songs or what they tell one each other.
The viewer will have a panoramic sightseeing of the environment, confortably in their home planning their own new travel.
Both of them have a great potential, but they need a company specialized in these technologies; build an app or a virtual landscape isn’t a job for everyone, also for a big vinery.
A couple years ago, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) teamed up with Samsung to create a virtual reality spot, dedicated to Asian buyers, and I told you what happens in Australia about VR/AR in wine industry.
All these experiments are advertising to show a wine region to customers and investors; it means that there is a great investment on purpose of a great earning.
The only way for little vineries to use these expensives technologies is alliance and sharing the result with hospitality structures, restaurant, shops.
