IT is potentially a multi-|million-pound market that a Hampshire business is hoping to have a major slice of.

Up until recently Augmented Reality – the latest in 3D technology – has been largely confined to garages and the bedrooms of “techies”.

But now fledgling company Crane 3d is turning the cutting edge technology into a commercial enterprise.

Augmented Reality or AR allows images to come to life by seemingly jumping off the page, allowing users to take virtual tours of the printed illustrations or take control of characters in story books.

All the user needs is an app that can be downloaded to an iPhone or android smart phone that, when hovered over the page, will bring the drawings to life.

Although initially targeting the children’s book market and advertising campaigns for luxury cars and boats, the potential of the technology is huge.

Virtual tours of housing and construction developments could become commonplace at local authority meetings, while trainees could use the interactive app to learn how to strip an engine or even help medical students practise surgery.

Director Chris Ward said: “It is really exciting technology and it has been in development for a while but there are very few companies that are working with it as a commercial enterprise.

“We want to move it from being something that is essentially really cool into something that can be used commercially. It has fantastic potential to be used in all sorts of industries. At the moment we are focusing on using it in advertising campaigns and children’s story books.

“For example you could actually see the Gruffalo taking a walk through the woods in front of you.

“There is also a huge advertising market that would allow you to see the product in front of you.”

Based at Romsey Industrial Estate, sister company Vermont, which has a ten-strong workforce, provides and manages IT support and technology for businesses but its engineers worked on the AR in their spare time and as a result Chris and co-director Oliver Mackley formed sister company Crane 3d with the aim of developing it and other 3D marketing tools.

Oliver said: “What has really expanded the market is the use of smart phones, iPhones and android devices which have replaced laptops and computers in how people access online products.”

According to latest research there are likely to be 1.4 billion annual downloads of AR apps worldwide by 2015, up from just over 11 million last year.

It is a market that is likely to be worth about $1.5 billion in the next four years.