The Parisian event in this winter 2022, is the presentation of ETERNELLE NOTRE-DAME, a historical and immersive walk around the building. But virtually! An Immersive Expedition that we were able to discover at La Défense, before its implementation in the heart of Paris near the renovation of Notre-Dame. Produced by Orange and supported by several institutions, it is the company Emissive that realized this more real than life experience. Here’s a look back at the project with its managing director, Fabien Barati.
Emissive, at the forefront of immersive experiences
Fabien Barati – Emissive was founded 16 years ago. I studied multimedia around 3D engines with a desire to create uses outside of video games. With my partner, we were already testing a lot of things for museums and exhibitions, with several screens etc. We started working for Dassault Systèmes in particular. We started by working for Dassault Systèmes in particular. We worked with Cave, but also with VR headsets prior to the Oculus. The arrival of the Rift encouraged us to accelerate around this technology. Today we offer other devices (AR…) but virtual reality is our main creation medium. And that’s how we propose today what we call Immersive Expeditions. Emissive is a creative studio of 30 people in Paris and we produce everything in-house.
What are Immersive Expeditions?
F. B. – This concept of Immersive Expeditions, we developed it following the realization of projects that laid the foundations of multi-user immersion. There was THE ENEMY (imagined by Karim Ben Khelifa – see his interview) in 2015 which allowed us to touch the multi-user free roaming with nearly 20 users simultaneously. At the time, it was a feat! We felt that we needed to continue in this direction. We co-created in 2017, with Dassault and the HIP Institute, ScanPyramidsVR which was presented at the Cité de l’Architecture, and offered a visit to the Cheops pyramid with a real guide.
F. B. – These experiences motivated us to develop the concept, which we called Immersive Expeditions – and with a real business model to make it a full-fledged commercial activity, not one-shots. We raised funds in 2020 with Bpifrance, HTC and the ArtNova group. This allowed us to have the time to develop a fully-fledged technological platform to create, broadcast and operate these Immersive Expeditions live. In parallel, we were already working with Orange on ETERNELLE NOTRE-DAME.
F. B. – This Immersive Expedition format is based on the principle of location-based discovery of reconstructed cultural or natural universes by groups. Free-roaming with a large capacity of visitors, over several hundred square meters and a duration of experience greater than 40 minutes. When we look at the audience of ETERNELLE NOTRE-DAME, it is the proof that virtual reality can be a social, physical experience, with real interactions. We focus on cultural and educational content, with real expertise in heritage and science. We are used to working with institutions and large groups on these subjects.
Consider true operating profitability
F. B. – It is a format that has a performance objective, with visitor flows that create revenue for the entire production and distribution chain. Emissive is a co-producer, but also a distributor of this type of content. For ÉTERNELLE NOTRE-DAME, we started with 20 people simultaneously, then 50 people, and soon reached 100 people. The technology allows it without worrying, but we have to get our teams used to it, and remain cautious about managing such a large group of visitors. The added value of the Emissive platform is that we can manage everything in one place (reception, exit, comfort in the space, etc.).
F. B. – Emissive is a content creator, producer and software editor. We really participate in the distribution of our experiences. In this sense, we hope to soon offer our platform to other creators. Before that, the challenge with ETERNELLE NOTRE-DAME is to be able to duplicate the experience and offer it in several cities, or even several countries at the same time. We are very lucky to have been able to produce the experience with a real budget thanks to Orange, but also to benefit from the event expertise of Amaclio Productions, which knows how to manage this type of exhibition. As a result, we are focusing on the next Expeditions…
F. B. – In order to develop and create competition, you have to create the conditions for a real market. And this is what we are trying to do! This has allowed us to find real partners to imagine more ambitious experiences. For a majority of VR productions, the audience is reduced to a few people at festivals. We try to go beyond that, but with other French studios like Backlight or EVA (ex-SmartVR) our proposals are made over time to find a real audience. This is also the point of discussing it within our association French Immersive Studios (FIS) so that French skills in this field are recognized.
ETERNELLE NOTRE-DAME
F. B. – We started to imagine the ETERNELLE NOTRE-DAME experience with Orange and Bruno Seillier in 2019, shortly after the monument burned down. It’s a great opportunity to prove that virtual reality can be used in contexts like this, with a real story to share beyond a technical demonstration. On this project we wanted to develop a real narrative, while integrating spiritual, historical, architectural and heritage elements, but also the desire to communicate about Notre-Dame and the associated professions. A part of the operating income goes to the reconstruction.
F. B. – We’ve all worked together on these things, and it’s also part of our skill set to work with these institutions – as we did with the Louvre recently for MONA LISA: BEYOND THE GLASS. At Emissive, we are committed to being faithful to the history of the place, and not to reduce the quality of the experience. We are in consistent budgets for VR, even if obviously we remain far from television or cinema.
F. B. – ETERNELLE NOTRE-DAME is also a research project. To design the environments, we need very precise sources of information. We will be inspired by things that still exist (in different cities or churches in France, for example). We pay attention to the chronology of the places; there is therefore a real work of pre-production to be faithful to the history of Notre-Dame, in close relationship with experts: historians and architects. Only then do we move forward on storyboards and “artists’ views”. The production itself lasted 18 months.
A relationship with a VR manufacturer, an advantage?
F. B. – Being accompanied by a manufacturer like HTC is obviously a huge advantage. It was a real chance to have the Vive Focus 3. We made this choice at the last moment, and it made a lot of things easier for us technically. We can mention the robustness of the tracking or the integrated sound that makes the experience more comfortable – even if you don’t want to have a too noisy environment.
F. B. – Today you can live the experience with a helmet and a backpack. The latter is really useful to have the necessary power, the precision of the explored worlds. But it is obviously a disadvantage of use (and a cost!) that we are working to correct so that we can do without it. And it will facilitate the deployment of the experience with less hardware to store etc. We hope to use autonomous headsets with wifi or 5G cloud computing within a few months, even if the latter is made complex by the large number of simultaneous viewers.
F. B. – We also chose to impose a virtual guide, a character who encourages the audience to move forward in the story. To observe the spectators, it is almost compulsory for our Immersive Expeditions. It is necessary that the spectators move from one sequence to another; without this guide, some may remain static! We have other tricks to control the flow in the experience. Providing the illusion of freedom while letting the audience enjoy the experience. We hope to offer ETERNELLE NOTRE-DAME in even larger venues in the near future.
ETERNELLE NOTRE-DAME is available at the Espace Grande Arche (La Défense, Paris), and soon in Paris itself (the Conciergerie in spring 2022, under the Parvis de Notre-Dame at the end of 2022).
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