19 Oct 2016

DADIs - Best Use of VR nomination

We're thrilled to announce that our Fantasy Flight VR experience for Thomas Cook Airlines has been nominated for Best Use of VR in the 2016 DADI awards. We are up against some stiff competition with campaigns for Google, Virgin and Reebok, so let's get our game faces on and see what happens on awards night, Oct 19th!

Thomas Cook Airlines' engaged Catch as their social agency of record, and in March 2016 we launched a new activation for them, "Fantasy Flight". It brings to life 360-degree exploration that lets you try before you fly.

www.thomascookairlines.com/fantasyflight

Best experienced on mobile devices via the YouTube app, viewers change their perspective of Thomas Cook Airlines’ refurbished premium and economy class cabins in real-time by moving their device around. The video features real pilots and cabin crew going about their normal duties while the cabin comes to life with characters connected to three new routes launching 2016.

If the user explores thoroughly they can find clues to three of the airline’s newest destinations which could win them a £3,000 Los Angeles holiday.

“We’ve used recently-developed 360-degree video technology to open the doors of our great new cabins on our Airbus A330 fleet.”

Tom Morely, Senior Marketing Manager Thomas Cook Airlines

Founding Partner of Catch, Jonathan Smith, said: “2016 is set to be Virtual Reality’s breakout year. This new technology is perfectly placed to highlight Thomas Cook Airlines’ new routes and high-end A330 aircraft. We used three GoPro cameras assembled to capture an entire spherical perspective of the cabin scene, creating an innovative experience. We had a lot of fun with a 50+ strong crew of actors, airline staff and impersonators to bring the new destinations into the cabin, as well as providing clues which viewers can find to enter a competition to win a holiday to LA.”

Senior Marketing Manager for Thomas Cook Airlines, Tom Morey, said: “We’ve used recently-developed 360-degree video technology to open the doors of our great new cabins on our Airbus A330 fleet."

“By summer this year, we’ll be operating seven of these long haul aircraft on direct flights from Manchester to Miami, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Orlando and Las Vegas. Customers don’t have to wait and see how it looks, they can find out right now by interacting with these amazing videos.”

Join the fun on social at #TCAFantasyFlight www.facebook.com/ThomascookairlinesUK or dive straight into the 360-degree experience at www.thomascookairlines.com/fantasyflight

21 Feb 2016

Can you use Drupal 8 yet?

Hi, I’m Robyn and I’ve been a Drupal Developer Apprentice at Catch for three months. 

As developers, modules are crucial to everything we do. They help manage media and content across complex sites, they simplify back-end processes and PHP development, and they help implement complex components and features across sites in a matter of minutes where they’d normally take hours. They are the bread-and-butter of Drupal development, and without stable modules available our job would be very, very difficult.

As such, when Drupal 8 was released we took a special interest in the state of module development. Because Drupal 7 has benefitted from more than 5 years of contribution and development from the Drupal community, Drupal 7 is an incredibly stable and powerful platform. 

We’ve been a bit spoiled, and despite the really amazing changes and improvements that we’ve been promised with Drupal 8, we were hesitant to jump on the bandwagon until we’d done a bit more research on what modules were really available for use. 

So, back in early December (shortly after Drupal 8 was released) I started to track the development status of modules in Drupal 8. I put together a list of the most-used Drupal modules and examined each module’s development status. 

Here's what I found: 

 

Status of Drupal’s top 25 most-used modules (Dec 2015): 

In Core: 7

Stable: 5

Percent Usable: 48%

In Alpha & Beta: 3

Unstable: 7

Unavailable: 3

Percent Unusable: 52%

 

If I’m 100% honest, I was pretty stunned at these numbers. With only 48% of Drupal’s most-used modules available at the time, it seemed that developing a complex site in Drupal 8 would have been a worrying prospect, given the inherent stability of Drupal 7. 

This was a disappointing outcome - we really wanted to start building in Drupal 8 but it just wasn’t ready for us!  

Given the dedicated and active Drupal community, I was curious to see how quickly things would improve. I figured it was just a matter of time before more people started getting involved. 

And so, three months have passed since that initial review and now, with Drupal Camp London just around the corner (Mar 4th - 6th), I thought it would be a good time to take another look. 

 

Status of Drupal’s top 25 most-used modules (Feb 2016):

In Core: 11

Stable: 6

Percent Usable: 68%

In Alpha & Beta: 4

Unstable: 4

Unavailable: 0

Percent Unusable: 32%

 

These results represent a 20% increase in the availability of Drupal’s top-modules within just a three month time frame. 

While that number may not sound terribly impressive at first glance, it represents a significant effort on behalf of the Drupal community to get Drupal 8 up-and-running. 

As Drupal is completely open-source and dependent on the unpaid contributions of its members, that 20% improvement is 100% fueled by the voluntary efforts and pure dedication of people throughout the community. And that’s just downright impressive. Plus, pathauto and admin toolbar work now!

But, don't just take my word for it. Feel free to take a look at my research!

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