Last Thursday, Chattanooga, Tennessee, played host to the famed Riverbend Festival. The nine-day event is held every June and offers a bevy of entertainment. This year, the Air National Guard (ANG) attended the festival to debut their “Rise to the Challenge” tour.
The ANG invited attendees to the festival to take part in simulated missions that challenges their motor and cognitive skills. The tour features some advances technologies to make sure the challenges seem as realistic as possible. Amongst these technologies is augmented reality.
AR has been getting a lot of attention from the game industry as it offers a new medium through which people can experience games. For the Air National Guard, it presents an opportunity to shed some insight on the life of military service.
Participants are taken through seven stations, each equipped with AR missions designed to challenge specific skills that the Air National Guard values.
Jackie Bilvao, tour crewperson, says that the tour is part of a new campaign designed to raise awareness and interest in the Air National Guard. The interactive tour is set to travel around the country, inviting anyone and everyone to take part in the various AR missions. While participating, players will have a chance to learn of career opportunities within the Guard and how to seek recruitment if they are interested.
Essentially, the campaign is another form of marketing. By using augmented reality technology, the Guard is taking marketing to a new level of interactivity that has yet to be fully explored.
