Amazon Rolls Out Virtual Try-On Service for Mobile Devices

Amazon Fashion launched a virtual try-on experience for shoe shopping Thursday. The interactive Virtual Try-On Shoes mobile experience uses augmented reality to help customers visualize how they will look wearing a pair of shoes in varying colors and angles, it said. Participating brands include New Balance, adidas, Reebok, Puma, Superga, Lacoste, Asics and Saucony. Shoppers click a virtual try-on button in the Amazon mobile app, point their smartphone's camera at their feet and images of the shoes are superimposed over the shoes they’re wearing. We found mixed results in a brief audition of the AR technology. While viewing Reebok sneakers, we found white shoes to look natural, while a black version of the same shoe looked artificial. A different black version of the same shoe style effectively showed alternating fabric and leather textures. A pink version looked cartoonish. Digital artifacts appeared in most renderings, showing as jagged lines between our jeans and the start of the shoe. A glitch on an adidas shoe presented the left shoe in white, the right shoe in gray. We noticed our iPhone was warm after a few minutes of taxing processor usage.