Electronics

Augmented reality app lets you see through catalog models' clothing

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The cover of Moosejaw's winter catalog
Moosejaw's X-ray app as advertised in App Store
The cover of Moosejaw's winter catalog
A screenshot from the iPhone version of the X-ray app presenting a male model
A screenshot from the iPhone version of the X-ray app presenting a female model
The X-ray app can also be used to interact with an online version of the catalog
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Here's an unlikely recipe for successfully spicing up a winter clothes catalog - make the models lose their clothes, or to be more exact, allow your clients to see what is hiding underneath the bulky winter garments. The X-Ray augmented reality app by clothing retailer Moosejaw does exactly that. It uses your mobile device's camera and some augmented reality trickery to grant you X-ray vision, as you scan both female and male models' bodies in the catalog. All you have to do is position your device over the catalog pages.

Augmented reality is a versatile technology. It can make a car trip more enjoyable and interactive, it can help you repair your BMW and it can revolutionize the way you interact with your surroundings. Oh, and it can be used to see what other people look like in their undies.

Of all the different fields augmented reality is being applied to, it is marketing that has allowed the technology to really take root, and Moosejaw's ingenious application provides another proof of its effectiveness. Seventy-five thousand downloads in five weeks, one million impressions on Twitter and 160,000 video views - these numbers from MarxentLabs, the maker of the app, speak for themselves. Most importantly, however, the application contributed to a 37 percent boost in sales compared with the same period a year earlier.

Although this is perhaps unlikely, we do hope that the success of Moosejaw's X-Ray app is going to serve as a signal to all the marketing managers out there that interactive advertising is better than unsolicited advertising (no matter how well targeted it is). At the same time, we pray that the idea of augmented reality-powered X-ray scanning is going to remain constrained to winter clothing catalogs, and we will never see it ported to one of these things.

The app is available for iPhone, iPad and Android devices and can also be used to interact with an online version of the catalog available on Moosejaw's website. See the video below for instructions.

Source: Mashable

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8 comments
Robert Weeks
Is this legal?
SpaceBagels
Looks like the image is just switched when you enable the \'xray\' function on the phone. It\'s not like the transparency of the clothes is increased, just a simple image switch.
How is this augmented reality? More like augmented pervertry...
And the point of the winter catalogue is? If they wanna fap that\'s what the Internet is for...
Rt1583
Uhm, isn\'t that what the various adult magazines, let alone the internet, are for?? Next thing you know, somebody is going to invent a pen with a picture of a model on it that strips when you write with it or even, now this one will make tons of money, a coffee cup with a picture of a model which is heat sensitive and strips when you put hot water in it.
Gene Jordan
The previous posters have missed the point of this app. It was not created as a tool for the perverted. Rather, it allows the clothing retailer Moosejaw (creator of the app) to sell clothes on the pages of it\'s catalog and with the help of an iPad, iPhone, or Android offer images of the same model in underwear in order to create sales of said underwear line. It\'s not going to work on just any catalog. You really should read all of the text of the article before commenting after simply looking at the pictures.
Also, the person that created that video above needs to feed their cat ;) ^..^
Gregg Eshelman
A gimmick to get media attention (which has obviously worked) instead of simply having the site show the models in their undies when the winter clothed images are clicked.
Dawar Saify
Saves advertising space, saves money. And promotes enthusiasm and sales.
Randolph Directo
Actually, it\'s what Gene said. The app allows models to \"change clothes.\" It doesn\'t have to be their underwear, but that\'s what makes it interesting. Now, if they made that app standard on 3DHDTVs wherein select actors want to give viewers a \"look see\" when they approach a certain \"window\" I can see that happening too.
Tiltrotortech
@ RT1583 - Both of those products exist already.