Porsche Taycan AR app – exploration with X-ray vision

Everyone knows these videos with the cool effects where using augmented reality technology, the picture literally shows an augmented reality. Apart from the fact that you need all the technical data of the components for this, the computing effort for the rendering should not be underestimated. Porsche has developed an AR app with which a deeper look at and into the Taycan is possible – I had the opportunity to test this app at an event in the Porsche Experience Center at the Hockenheimring.

A new perspective thanks to AR

Normally at a car event you just stand in front of the car and maybe still have the opportunity to open the bonnet, where everything is usually so tightly packed that apart from a cover, you can hardly see anything of the engineering skill that went into vehicle development.

In the past, manufacturers often built a special platform for the vehicle where individual details could be seen.

A fragile one-off piece has to be manufactured manually by a team of engineers. And then you have to transport it from event to event, which isn’t exactly sustainable either. With the Taycan AR Event App, a much more detailed view of the vehicle technology is possible, it is more flexible and interactive. And you can use them again for every launch event. ” Miro Demel – Head of Event Communication Porsche

You can get an impression of what it looked like in the picture above where I stand in the “skeleton” of the Porsche Cayenne Turbo S E-Hybrid.

AR mode or clone mode

One thing that I personally particularly liked is that there is also a clone mode in addition to the AR mode. This allows you to separate the technical interior of the Taycan from the physical vehicle, giving you a particularly good view of the technology inside.

The country needs more AR

The video itself already shows very well what the result of the app looks like. In fact, it was still important to me to write a few words about the AR app.

In my opinion, AR has a lot of potential and the Porsche app is a good showcase for what is already technically possible today. Here, too, the end of the flagpole has not yet been reached.

In conclusion, I am therefore quoting part of the Porsche press release on the AR app

It is precisely this flexibility that makes the app so interesting: the ability to add models and functions as well as to improve and further develop the functionality – all in an effective and, above all, resource-saving way. What’s next? “We would like to offer users of the app even more diverse content,” explains Henze. “At the moment the content is still linear, that is, structured in a single animation flow. This means that you go from one chapter to the next in the story on a timeline. It would be great to develop different workflows. This gives users more leeway in creating unique content. “

By then, the app is already changing the way content creators create their content. “The technical possibilities have changed fundamentally in a very short time,” summarizes Demel. “Until recently, you needed a huge crew and a big budget to do something this complex. Even then, film-like special effects would mostly have been wishful thinking. Today someone can just come by with their smartphone. I find this development remarkable. “

My personal impression was that it was very easy to create the video with the app and I really hope to see something like this in such a successful implementation in the future.