This week’s Smart City roundup features a new way in which virtual reality promotes tourism, an app to replace your driver’s license, and an embeddable smart solution for building construction management.

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Destination BC utilizes Oculus Rift to promote tourism

Looking for your next travel destination could soon be as easy as wearing an Oculus Rift, the virtual reality heads-up display unit acquired by Facebook Inc. earlier this year.

To entice people to travel to and explore British Columbia, Destination BC is utilizing the virtual reality experience offered by Oculus Rift in its new Wild Within promotional video.

The promotion is set in the Great Bear Rainforest on the Pacific Coast and wearer of the Oculus Rift goes on a “choose your own destination” type of journey. Looking up will let you see the sky or the top of the tall trees, and there are times when your tour guide will ask you where you want to go next. The direction of where you are looking at determines if you will be turning left, right or just straight ahead.

“We just really wanted to make it an interactive experience, on top of being immersive, and give people the opportunity to make choices as if they were actually traveling in BC,” David Giovondo, a creative director who worked on the Oculus experience, said in a video detailing how his team pulled off the feat.

At the moment, Oculus Rift is only available to developers, but Destination BC hopes to bring their promotional video to tech expos and make it available to consumers once the device hits the market. This will allow people to see what British Columbia has to offer to tourists without them leaving their homes.

Iowa’s digital driver’s license

The state of Iowa’s Department of Transportation (DoT) is working on an app that would allow citizens to store a digital copy of their driver’s licenses. A digital copy can be used as a replacement or can be used alternatively with their plastic driver’s license. This way, even if a driver forgets or loses his or her driver’s license, the electronic copy is just as good as the hard, plastic version. The app will be free and will be acceptable for use at airport screeners, bars, traffic stops, and other establishments and incidents requiring a driver’s license.

Aside from convenience, the app also aims to crack down on fraudulent driver’s license as it will feature optical bar codes and 3D-like photos that will be hard to replicate. Though there are security concerns regarding the app, DoT Director Paul Trombino stated that the app will require a PIN to open the app, so even if the phone is lost, the driver’s license will not be readily accessible. The DoT also plans to add more security features such as facial recognition and iris or fingerprint scanning.  The app is slated for a 2015 release.

Arbor Solution’s smart building panel

IT hardware, software and professional services company Arbor Solution, Inc. introduced the LYNC-708 Touch Panel PC an embeddable computing solution for smart building management.

The LYNC-708 Touch Panel PC is powered by an Intel Atom N2600 processor and features an eight-inch touch screen display. It has a flexible modular design that can be integrated into office buildings, commercial complexes and school campuses to lower management costs by integrating a building system and its equipment. It can also reduce expenses as it provides a way for building managers to monitor and control the system remotely.

The LYNC-708 aims to empower building management in terms of security, energy savings, automatic control and access monitoring. Building systems and equipment are integrated in one place, including surveillance, ventilation, air conditioning, fire detectors and alarm, lighting, parking deck systems, elevators and escalators, and various energy management systems.

photo credit: Sergey Galyonkin via photopin cc