Show HN: Best Buy Uses WebGL to Create Interactive Appliances | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Best Buy Uses WebGL to Create Interactive Appliances

esd.bbystatic.com

44 pointsrelaunched23 comments

This is a project my team has been working on a very long time and I'm really excited to see it in the wild.

All the 3d urls:

  * 4-Door Refrigerator - http://esd.bbystatic.com/3d/5258309/  

  * Top-Load Washer - http://esd.bbystatic.com/3d/8822012/ 
  
  * Front-Load Washer w/ Steam and Water Jets - http://esd.bbystatic.com/3d/4995705/

A post with too many links is not interesting and looks spammy.

I think it's better if you cherrypick two or three of them and add a small explanation. For example:

* Fridge with transparent door: [link here]

* Washer with additional soap container: [link here]

* Complete list of all 3d pages: link here

---

Also, if you have been working in this, a nice blog post about your work would be more on topic. Is this official? Differences with the previous page? Will this be integrated with the official page? Where did you get the models? Do you have to tweak the models or the WebGL support? Is there an impossible to render machine?

(On the technical side, this takes almost a minute to load in my slow netbook, you should add a "loading" animation. And the color changing button is not obvious.)

That's a great idea. A blog post about the work is in the works, but has a few hoops to jump through before I can release it.

I appreciate the technical feedback as well. We are continually refining the ui/ux component. I'm very excited to show the work, but want to add the correct context so that others easily and meaningfully consume it.

How are the models generated? From existing assets, like a CAD file or something?

We do a lot of work to ensure we represent the assets in as true to form as possible. However, I'll check to see if the company is okay with me answering this question and get back to you. I am comfortable saying that the work effort is not trivial.

How much time is 'a very long time'?

I'll forward your question and if I can answer it, I will.

I don't suppose you guys have found a way to make it economical to model, texture and animate products en masse? ;)

LoL, it is not fully automated. Unfortunately, the economics isn't something I can talk about.

Figured as much. I've worked on projects before that have tried to make it work financially, but 3D capture always falls short on quality (and I'll bet the specular highlights on those appliances caused you guys many hours of fun if you tried that approach too!) and it's too expensive to hand-craft all the assets. Hope you guys make it work! It's a cool area and I'm sure you'll have clients queuing up if you can!

If they were cooperating with the manufacturers the mesh could come as an export from the cad/cam package the hardware designers use.

There is a minor bug: Any mouse event over the control panel, even a mouse wheel spin, causes the drum to stop and or start. This leads to strange starts and stops of the drum if you happen to zoom in while hovering over the control panel. I would expect the drum to start and stop spinning only on clicks.

I'll make a note, thx.

This is an awesome start, but ultimately of limited usefulness to me. When I was recently shopping for a new refrigerator I really wanted one of these new fancy fridges with the larger area for produce. The problem was there was only 1 that would fit my oddly shaped space, and i wasn't sure if the dimensions listed included the hinge for the door or not (i had a cabinet above the fridge), and it was going to be tight.

What I really wished I could do at the time was take out my phone, take a picture of my space, give a few measurements for reference, and have you render the new fridge in the space.

That's a very common problem, which we encounter both in-store and online. Solving it will be key to providing the best possible customer experience; stay tuned.

Great job! I really like how you added a reflection on the door of the Front-Load Washer

Thanks for noticing the level of detail. We're really proud of the work; someone on the team has an amazing eye for detail ;-)

On mobile there's no navigation back to the product page? What if I want to buy it?

Be interesting to hear if this is actually useful for people or just tech for the point of tech. The zoom to see the controls I can see the benefit of, the underside of the washing machine less so!

Just to add, nice implementation, worked smoothly on an iPhone 6.

Thanks! We're very proud of what we've built, though we're still working on it.

For now, the link to the 3d demo only renders on our dotCom proper webiste. However, the links I sent out do render on mobile web. This is a new capability that we are hoping to expand and work out some of these types of issues. However, this is only a test and [hopefully] only the beginning.

As to whether or not it's useful, early indicators were positive, but only time will tell.

As much as I would like to be enthralled by such technology, it seems we have hardly progressed at all in the last 10 years wrt 3D web technology. For example, look at this demo of VRML shader technology which is 9 years old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFz7-RbGV8s

Now, where are the game changers?

There is no discharge port.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com