Latest market survey from famous research institute IDC, Framingham near Boston, USA, confirms the fast growing trend of demand in the communication industry for mobile devices like smart phones or tablet computers. Not only mobile phones returned in 2010 to growth but also IDCs forecast anticipates for 2015 total mobile phone shipments of 2.1 billion units. Vendors of such equipment have shipped 1.4 billion units or 17 percent more pieces in 2010 after 1.2 billion in 2009. In this regard smart phones which for instance enable users to receive or to send e-mails also played an important role. The high demand of smart phones this way helped to overcome the temporary weakness of the mobile device market in 2009 in the midst of the global economic recession..
Due to the increased demand of iphones, ipads, smartphones and tablet computers mainly the bigger computing power, a larger size of displays compared to standard mobile phones now allow to realize also 3D images and scenes and its circulation, to an increasing degree. The 3D software industry therefore advances its technology for 3D applications and pro-vides the opportunity to integrate 3D software based applications into mobile equipment too.
One of the leading 3D technology offering companies since app. 10 years is the in Germany located software developer Bitmanagement Software GmbH. Bitmanagement provides a 3D viewer technology which is based on its core product BS Contact. Developer can integrate the viewer into their applications and products for featuring an interactive real time rendering viewing experience. Using the dedicated viewer BS Contact Mobile also virtual applications like Augmented Reality(AR) can be realized.
Bitmanagement and Fraunhofer Institute (IGD) jointly got involved with the latest project "interAR - Augmented Reality " which is sponsored by "Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie" (German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Technology), targeting the development of a platform to create AR applications with 3D scenes and products. Bitmanagement contributes to the project a scalable and mobile 3D viewer which is designed for commercial and in mass markets offered mobile devices like Apple iPhone 3,4, as well as Nokia mobile phones and others.
The platform will be based on the interactive mobile content format X3D. Therewith the decision has been made in favour of the content format X3D being now the standard for developing 3D scenes. X3D is the enhanced and refined successor of the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) format. X3D has been developed and is regularly maintained by Web3D consortium in the US. Bitmanagement is member of the consortium since 2002.
Bitmanagement already is dealing with Augmented Reality (AR) software since its foundation in 2002, when the company developed an AR prototype for Deutsche Telekom. Augmented Reality is the computer aided enhancement of the perception of our 'real' reality. In the 3D world AR means the mix of images and video sequences with 3D models and 3D worlds. Technical services and assembling, CAD applications as well as the visualization of measuring and simulation results or architectural drawings and models are among numerous 3D AR applications.
The 3D viewer software BS Contact Mobile will also support features like multi touch screens as well as 180° swivel modus or as also named 'landscape and portrait' modus. The users therefore can count on having the respective state of the art features available with BS Contact Mobile embedded in its application.