Augmented reality has a long history with advertising in the automotive industry, but Audi has taken it a step further with the launch of its A1 in Russia. People in a handful of Russian cities can use Layar to visualize how the new car will look in the natural environment using a 3D model of the snazzy ride.

The layer was created in cooperation between developers AR Door and creative agency Rodnaya Rech and is part of a broader campaign by Audi which involved a contest recently run on Facebook. Users could visit various sites around each of the cities to view the car and could enter to win a free test drive by sharing a photo of the car in Layar to the Audi A1 Facebook app.

“The challenge for us was to create some unique AR experience,” says Irina Kharseeva of AR Door. “That’s why we used in the layer 3D objects instead of simple 2D icons. Audi A1 is the first layer with 3D in Russia.”

According to AR Door, over 1,600 users registered for the Facebook group. The winners of the contest will be announced on the 9th of November.

Check out a video below of the Audi A1 layer in action, and if you’re in Russia, look around for the car using Layar!

世界を見る - 세상을보고 - Увидеть мир*

Many things are better in your own native language. So is Layar. The Layar Reality Browser now has language support in Japanese, Korean and Russian. Get yours in the app store.

Also, for those who missed it: Layar already has language support in English, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish and German.

* See the world!

The past weeks 3 new international layers and 22 country layers have been launched. With 69 international layers, Layar is serving content in every country worldwide. On top of that more and more countries are plugged in with local, country specific content. This week Thailand’s and Russia’s first country layers have been launched. We talked to Howard Ogden from AugmentReality.co.uk and Irena Harseeva from ARdoor, who have been developing the MTS layer and the Estate Russia Dom.ru layer. Why build layers for Russia?

Howard: “MTS is a long standing client of JWT International, JWT International was one of the first agencies to get involved with Layar from launch, introducing brands such as Mazda early on to the possibilities of Layar. I started working with JWT International and MTS building the Russian layer back in late 2009. We had to geo-code their entire shop and distribution outlets across Russia, including all of the MTS wifi hot spots - no small task! We have created a great looking layer  in

Russian, that as Android and iPhone expand across the country will pick up momentum and we hope will help MTS offer more to their customers.”
Irena: “AR Door is an official Russian partner of Total immersion (France), the biggest software solutions provider with a proprietary technology that has been developed since 1999 - Augmented Reality. Unfortunately augmented reality based solutions are not yet popular in Russia. AR Door are the first to provide such technology in this country. What are my expectations? Well, I’m absolutely sure that Layar will be as successful and popular as it proved to be worldwide. … I have no doubt about Layar’s great hit on the Russian market in the nearest future.

What do you expect from Layar and your content layer in Russia?

Howard: “As far as we know this is a first in Russia, certainly a first of this scale and a service not offered by any other network provider in Russia. JWT Internationals Moscow office is rapidly growing and I hope that this partnership between our companies will continue to grow. We are currently working on a large scale project with JWT International Amsterdam to launch a new 3D layer early next month and I see a great future in cooperation’s of this nature between agencies and their existing clients and developers.”
Irena: “Layar proved to be an extremely successful project, launched only in 2009 but managed to get over 1 million users by now. I think this statement shows clearly its great potential. Why exactly for Estate Russia Dom.ru? Well, no doubt, using Estate Russia Dom.ru layer significantly eases the process of searching property. Whatever you are, you are able to define the search for relevant information about real estate in particular area just using your mobile phone.”

About the layers

MTS is one of the worlds largest telecoms companies, ranked 71 last year in the worlds most powerful brands by Millward Brown and the Financial Times. Based in Russia with operations across CIS and 87 million customers.
Dom.ru provides an extensive data base of approsimately 75,000 real estate units. Besides it proved to be a very reliable real estate agency.