How much would you pay for a pair of Adidas sneakers that could be acknowledged by your webcam and then used to control a special 3D world created just for those sneakers? About as much as you would pay for any ol’ pair or Adidas? Good, because that’s what Adidas plans on doing with a upcoming line of at least 5 men’s sneakers to be released in 2010.

Head of digital marketing for Adidas Originals Chris Barbour has been quoted saying:

“The foundation of augmented reality lies in adding a layer to the real world… That’s what we have done. We have taken a real world item and added a fantastic virtual world on top of that… We are not trying to mimic a real-world look, we have a more stylized, pop-up book creative approach… The neighborhood is displayed on a two dimensional computer screen, but you can use your shoe to control the angle and depth of view and zoom in and out, giving a 3-D sense of perspective.”

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Certainly one of the coolest augmented reality apps out there, Layar, is about to go 3D. As gimmicky as this may first seem upon first viewing of the inevitably popular Pac Man video, the venue labeling demo below shows that the tech has practical applications. It will be dropping this November with Layar 3.o.

Via Into Mobile

I don’t want to type too much here because I don’t think anything should be added to – or taken away from – what Thomas Ricker wrote over at Engadget. I think that this was filmed in his city and that he knows what’s being said.