With over a century of experience, Michigan-based Dow is a global leader in the innovation, creation, and distribution of specialty chemicals, advanced materials and plastics.

As a materials science company, Dow uses augmented reality applications to assist with marketing. Augmented reality is a technology that places a virtual object in the user’s view of the real world (see image to the right). At trade shows, these augmented reality applications demonstrate the value of Dow’s materials by providing interactive 3D models of their clients’ products.

For each product, a new application must be created, or an old application must be manually updated. Dow’s product catalog is continually expanding, requiring a significant time commitment on the part of Dow engineers.

Our 3D Product Showcase Application provides a standard platform for augmented reality experience creation. Customers can now use one application to view any of Dow’s clients’ products.

Viewing the world through a smartphone’s camera and screen, Dow customers can view and interact with 3D product models as if they exist in the space around them. Users can place a product on any visible surface, allowing for easy customization and visualization through tapping interactive regions around the model.

Utilizing our platform, Dow engineers and sales teams can easily and quickly develop new augmented reality experiences. Dow customers can now navigate one application for all Dow products, as opposed to learning a new application for each product.

The 3D Product Showcase Application stores product information and models in an SQL database in the Microsoft Azure cloud. The front end is implemented in C# using the Unity Game Engine and the AR Foundation framework for augmented reality. Our application supports both iOS and Android devices.