Hello everyone,
Nice to meet you here,
I’m starting now a project to build a shopping experience via AR/VR, essentially to have a 3d model for a physical shop (let’s say apple store for ex) where people can navigate to browse 2d and 3d products and be able to , add to cart, and complete the checkout process. Somehow, mocking the actual physical experience to some extent …
What I have in mind now is:
1- to load a “physical shop” 3d model using Babylon JS which will allow for mocking the real world store navigation experience
2- when users click on a product (which could be 2d or 3d) they will see some sort popoup with price and add to cart button
3- checkout experience to be done like a normal web checkout for now
So,…
How hard do you think this would be and can i get some feedback and/or guide how to start with #1 and #2?
Thank you,
this is one of those ideas that seem good on paper or while dreaming about it but in reality it is never going to be practical. It would be a novelty for the first minute or two and then it will get in the way. Too long load times if you expect your stuff to actually look good
Ive been in web development for over 15 years and was even working at a top agency when we explored this kind of idea over 10 years ago. So take it from someone who has been in several meeting with several professionals regarding your exact ideas, in the end, they were thrown out as infeasible.
Just look at any major current online shopping platform , have a look at several and get an idea of the UX. its streamlined and loads quickly and normally has other related features on the page , reviews , galleries , descriptions , Q&A , related productions. etc.
At best you can have a site built like these other good 2d examples and then as part of the gallery section have facility to view a 3d version of the product. That is the best Ive personally seem it done. making the 3d stuff a nice to have as part of the gallery but not the whole experience but any means. Users want good UX and fast load times that work great on any OS and device.
The load times for a full 3D experience on its own will demand good graphics and textures which will make load times unacceptable, handling all the related ui will also cause UX issues, and the performance on variour devices will vary drastically, 2d does not have that issue
You can look and you wont find big brand using things because they have all had meetings like the ones i had and steered away from it,
Rule of thumb , when it comes to e-commerce, UX - speed is king and 3D is not a fit for that.
hth.
ps Users like novity things for a minute of 2 and then their interest fades any to practicality , wanting the normal 2d UX experience. - practicality always wins
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Hello Shaderbytes,
Thank you so much for being frank and clear, I see also you have a great contribution here in the forums so I highly appreciate your input.
Yet, I wish to hear more feedback for similar building similar experiences before…
Thank you, everyone
taking the current bathroom configurator you can see here in the forums that im working one. That is just part of a whole larger application. There is a backend , a cms and a sales presentation layer.
The 3d configurator is simply part of that sales presentation layer. The important part to note here , it is optional . The entire application can work without it. A user is not required to engage with it as part of the apps purpose at all.
Ii is there simply for if a sales rep and user want to perhaps have a look at how some features would kind of look in a bathroom scene ( different tubs or showers or faucets, different wall designs or glass doors etc. )
This 3D configurator section is not useless though , even though it is a “non required section” if you make selections in it , those selections can be pushed through to when you go back to the regular 2d pages. Also if you have made many choices in the actual regular 2d app and load the 3D configurator , it will set itself up to best display your selections. It is also highly optimized and lazy loads only what is required. All aspects about it are focused on sales choices , so simple scene and easy navigation.
The take away here is having the 3D configurator in the app is a great novelty which users can dabble with if they wanted to but it never gets in the way of practicality - it can always be totally be skipped and ignored
Keep such ideas in your mind as you plan out your experience.
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Thank you so much. can you share the URL for the bathroom experience? I can’t find it
here is a post about it. It only showed the demo of the configurator part as this related to babylon. The full app is still under construction.
https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/five-star-bath-solutions-configurator/
What you have built over there is absolutely mind-blowing. We need to talk 