Garden City Booragoon has gone high-tech to attract and retain more shoppers over the school holidays, launching an interactive augmented reality system using technology developed in Europe.
The system, known as BroadcastAR, displays cinema-quality 3D animated scenes, with shoppers given the opportunity to interact with whatever is being broadcast on the screens.
It will allow shoppers to interact with polar bears, astronauts, dinosaurs, rhinos, dolphins and leopards on a cinema-sized screen which will be erected in the shopping centre.
The BroadcastAR system was developed by Budapest-based INDE Appshaker, and has since been rolled out at Universal Studios in Orlando, the Beijing Aquarium, the Smithsonian Museum and Kansas' PrairieFire Museum.
INDE Appshaker chief executive Alex Poulson said the company's media screens created significant entertainment value for shoppers.
"It provides people with another reason to visit a location and spend more time," Mr Poulson told Business News.
"This increase in dwell time on location means customers are more likely to spend.
"Advertising has traditionally been a one-way communication, which is not the right approach.
"Our approach is if you offer a customer something of value, an experience they can enjoy, then they will reward you."
Mr Poulson said the technology could be also adapted to allow individual brands to become part of the experience, with real-time analytics of the audience the screens attract.
"Using our computer vision platforms we can offer brands advertising in between the branded content and measure eyeballs as a result," he said.
"On smaller screen BroadcastAR systems we also measure the gender, age and the emotional state of the people looking at the content, which is an incredibly powerful tool going forward for advertisers."
Garden City's Globetrotter Experience will begin on Monday and run until February 1.
