May 24, 2022 – As part of a partnership with events promoter Live Nation, Snap Inc. recently announced that it teamed up with Insomniac Events to bring its technology to Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) Las Vegas, which took place on Friday last week.
As part of the experience, Snap created several new augmented reality (AR) Lenses and experiences that were designed to make it easier for festival goers to find both performances and friends, as well as to add AR visuals to photos captured at the festival.
Snap recently announced its multi-year partnership with Live Nation, which will see the two companies work together to elevate live performances beyond stages and screens through custom-built, immersive AR experiences, with help from Snap’s creative studio Arcadia.
Using some of Snap’s most advanced AR capabilities, festival-goers were able to experience EDC in a new dimension. Of the four lenses created by Snap, two were able to aid Snapchat users in finding different stages, as well as to locate their friends in the crowd through Snapchat’s location sharing feature.
The Lenses included:
Night Owl Lens – This Lens utilized Snapchat’s Sky Segmentation technology in order to bring the Electric Sky to life at the festival, where users could also see EDC’s iconic Owl soar overhead. The Owl appeared true-to-life to users thanks to the Sky Segmentation functionality, which is able to accurately place objects and animations in the open air.
Daisy Lens – Similar to Sky Segmentation, Daisy Lens utilized Snapchat’s Ground Segmentation functionality in order to grow blooms of flowers from the ground around users’ feet.
AR Compass – This Lens provided users with a personal guide to the festival by showing who is playing at every stage (and who was up next) on an AR map of the festival grounds.
Friend FindAR Lens – As with AR Compass, this Lens utilized Snapchat’s location sharing feature in order to allow festival goers to find their friends in the crowd (provided they too had their location sharing enabled on Snapchat) using augmented reality. According to Snap, this lens is in early beta now.
Commenting on its partnership with Live Nation, Snap stated: “There’s much more to come from our ongoing partnership with Live Nation. From Lollapalooza in Chicago and Wireless Festival in London, to Rolling Loud in Miami and The Governors Ball in New York… stay tuned for more festivals enhanced through Snap AR.”
EDC marks the first release of experiences from Snap under the partnership with Live Nation, and many more similar AR-driven festival experiences are expected from the two companies.
Of course, the applications for Snap’s AR technology extend far beyond live music. As AR hardware advances, mainly in the form of smart glasses, features such as geolocation through a head-worn AR interface will help to change the way in which people navigate the world around them. And with Snap expanding its AR hardware portfolio, both with the release of its Spectacles last year, as well as acquisitions of hardware companies such as WaveOptics, a manufacturer of waveguides, it will be interesting to see how Snap marries its AR software with its future AR hardware offerings.
For more information on Snap Inc. and its augmented reality solutions, please visit the company’s website.
Image / video credit: Snap Inc. / YouTube
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Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.