BMW Celebrates Five Decades of Culture Engagement with a Lineup of Augmented Reality (AR) ‚Art Cars‘
German automaker BMW and augmented reality (AR) partners Acute Art will celebrate the former’s 50 years of cultural engagement, it was announced this week.
In preparation for the 50th anniversary celebration, BMW will collaborate again with WebAR experts Acute Art to highlight BMW’s Art Car programme and bring its Art Cars to the public.
Acute Art’s WebAR platform converts BMW’s art cars into 3D digital twins, which users can place anywhere in the world.
Initially, Acute Art only converted one BMW Art Car into a WebAR digital twin — Cao Fei’s 2017 multimedia BMW Model 6 GT3 project.
But a month later, BMW has decided to re-release every Art Car as a digital twin to cover all entries in the initiative, which featured prolific artists such as Andy Warhol.
Initial Forays Into Extended Reality
Additionally, WebAR leaders 8th Wall helped BMW to develop its Virtual Viewer, an AR smartphone application which allows customers to place a BMW PHEV X5, X1 or 3 digital twin on their driveway.
The Munich-based firm also regularly experiments with virtual reality (VR) and recently partnered with Chinese VR firm Pico Interactive and Ireland’s Engage to release an i-Virtual Garage Experience.
BMW debuted the experience in early July at its Formula E Motorsport Workshop on the Engage VR platform to offer the automotive leaders a new way to work with sponsors, partners and customers.
But this was not the first of BMW’s venture into VR technology, namely after the 2020 Geneva International Motor Show was cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
BMW was set to showcase the new Concept i4 electric vehicle (EV), but quickly shifted to emerging AR/VR solutions to take part in the event. The firm later debuting the Concept i4 EV virtually to “pay tribute to the many people who have worked tirelessly” on the project, Oliver Zipse, Chairman of the Board of Management for BMW, said at the time.
Quelle: