To be able to walk through a cave inhabited over 500,000 years ago, visualize the remains of human occupation and then go out into the surrounding valley to observe the flora and fauna of that era: that's the dream of archaeologists at the Tautavel site in the Pyrénées-Orientales region of France.

Today, this dream is almost a reality with the Schopper project, supported by the French National Research Agency. Five French partners - three laboratories (CERP-HNHP, CEROS and LIX) and two companies (Craft.AI and Immersion Tools) - are working together to create innovative technological solutions for archaeological research.

One of the results of this project is a technology that generates landscapes of the Tautavel valley, frequented by prehistoric man during contrasting climatic periods (glacial and interglacial) between 600,000 and 90,000 years ago.

The results of an ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) project using artificial intelligence and virtual reality to create prehistoric simulations for the Tautavel site. When private companies work hand in hand with public research labs. A real treat for me!

Bernard Quinio, Director of the Continuing Education Department at Université Paris Nanterre - Vrailexia (Erasmus+) project manager for Ceros / UPN)

Yes! Working on this project for 4 years has been an immense pleasure as R&D manager for the teams behind easysuite360 😉. Firstly, because of the discovery of new worlds and new professions, and also because we had an incredible playground to validate, through rigorous protocols, the fact that virtual reality, in immersion, is a real plus and leads to a rethinking of the relationship between the real and digital worlds. Imagine wandering through the Tautavel cave, amidst 450,000 archaeological objects, accessing their files on a 1:1 scale, filtering the elements of the database according to your own criteria, visually, in 2 clicks (and in immersion!), instead of reading the information in an Excel table derived from an SQL query.

Link to The Conversation article summarizing the project

Photo Credit: Philippe C. Immersion Tools

How can health measures be combined with business performance?

Adapt, yes, but hurry!

Here's the thing. We all know that from the prospect discovery phase through to the first deal, it's essential to work on the question of engagement. Whether we're talking about our business or presenting our products, when we're at a distance, all it takes is a poor connection or a feigned connection, and once the video feed has been cut, it's impossible to know how they'll react to our sales pitch. No matter how brilliant? Gone is the perception of non-verbal language.

Worse still! While I'm struggling to bring my presentation to life, is he even present behind his PC, awake... Or has he slipped away to make himself a cup of coffee?!

Convincing from a distance: Do you have any tips?

But without even going that far, if my interlocutor and I are actually behind our screens, and we can fortunately see and hear each other properly, the screen-sharing that allows me to present the visual associated with my sales pitch remains a truly passive "experience". And even if I'm lucky enough to include multimedia elements in my presentation (video, testimonials, etc.), the person I'm talking to is still "under the influence" of things, and can drop out at any moment if I lose their interest and attention (e-mail arriving on their PC, text messages, etc.).
Giving the keys to commercial successAlso, ideally, to be able to create commitment, even if it's only in listening, we need to have tools that enable us to offer our contact not only to start the "presentation", but also to be the one to bring it to life, without it being a constraint. We discover together, but it's the other person who makes the journey.

The added value of such a dynamic presentation would be that, whatever path the client takes to link up the different "sequences", we'd go through each of the strategic points in the sales pitch, and by creating his or her own path of discovery, it would be the client who could initiate the process, and so, from being passive, he or she would have the opportunity to become truly active. That would change everything!

Such an approach, backed up by an online tool, would even enable me to send a link to an active presentation to an interlocutor, so that he can read it at his own pace. And because this product would be so well thought-out, I'd be able to know when he'd opened the presentation (and if he'd come back to it), and whether he'd played it back completely. This would allow me either to call him right after he's seen it, or if he doesn't, to follow up to pique his interest in a different way.
Then we'd tend to think: "Well, if such a product exists... I'm interested!

Some already have operational solutions that work!

So, to save future buyers time and optimize interest and availability, the real estate sector was quick to pre-empt the use of virtual tours (as early as 2014/2015 in the US for the forerunners using applications such as "VA-LIVE" presented in 2014 at the dedicated RENT 2014 show), based on studies already showing at the time (Coldwell Banker Smart Home for example) that 77% of buyers would like to take a virtual tour of a property before seeing it in person).
The idea: I choose what I want to see from a catalog, register (or not) and take a first tour of the "future owner". If I like the property, I make an appointment for a real visit.

The first sketches of this kind of product date back to 2018/2019, thanks to MATTERPORT'S 3D TECHNOLOGY in France. Entities such as BNP PARIBAS REAL ESTATE and other "majors" in the sector could afford it at the time (as the technologies were still quite expensive to implement).
In view of the interest shown in these solutions, a large majority of the major players in the sector, as well as smaller ones, are now offering this type of approach.

Why does a virtual visit represent real added value? Quite simply because you feel like you're there. The presentation becomes EXPERIENTIAL, and that changes a lot of things!

But is immobilization the only field capable of developing this type of approach and benefiting from these kinds of products?
Of course not... NO!

And if you don't work in real estate, how do you go about creating immersive content?

Imagine you sell products, whatever they may be, and you want to give your prospects the chance to discover them in a way other than through a paper catalog, or online on your website. Why not invite them to visit your showroom, if you have one, or to tour your production plant or assembly facilities?

How can you be more convincing than that by being able to show off your know-how, demonstrate your potential and your production capabilities, or show off your best customers by allowing them to visit the installations you've equipped for them!

Welcome to the "next world"!

Today, there's nothing magical or inaccessible about all this! And quite a few products exist to help you achieve these different approaches.
Once you've created your presentations, you can put them in the hands of your sales force by adding an innovative approach (presentation in videoconference/Webinar mode, web link proposed in a mailing, etc.). You can also simply integrate them into the communication and marketing materials you make available to your prospects (network posts, articles, newsletters, web pages, etc.). And if you have tracking tools (even free ones such as Google Analytics) integrated into these media, you can add a new dimension to your sales conversation channel.

Then, of course, there's the question of the cost of setting up this kind of support. After all, it's often the crux of the matter!

It's clear that there's somethingfor every budget and taste: from content creation platforms that welcome you and let you get on with it (the best of which take the time to train you via online tutorials), to agencies that offer a more "turnkey" approach and with whom you'll find it hard to keep control of updating your publications.

This year, Mark Zuckerberg, the celebrity boss of the Facebook constellation (Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Oculus, ...) spoke at the event (you never know 😁 ) about his vision of the future (5 to 10 years ahead) and in particular about the place that would be given to new uses linked to virtual reality or augmented reality.

If you've got 30 minutes to spare, you can watch a video of him being interviewed by Vivatech co-founder Maurice Lévy:

Setting the scene:

If you haven't seen Spielberg's "Ready Player One", I suggest you log on to your favorite Netflix account and have a movie night at home watching this futuristic film...

Indeed, what Facebook's boss is delivering is a vision of the world in which, for the greater good of all (🤔), virtual (online) universes, known in English as "Metaverses", have become daily living and sharing spaces, for everyone, whether to work, socialize or play...

His analysis is interesting at least in its starting point, but we'll see that whether we agree or not, it's not without consequences!
 

What and who are AR and VR (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality) good for?

He takes the example of an initial partnership with Essilor & Ray Ban, which will see the release this year (probably 2021/2022) of the first pair of augmented glasses with a "normal" appearance. And from this example, he extrapolates (by mixing AR and VR interchangeably) what tomorrow's uses could be (the perspective he gives is 5 to 10 years):

Beyond the "obvious" aspects of social networks, online content sharing and games, he stresses the need for the pro world to investigate and imagine the new uses offered by VR as much as AR, by recontextualizing its experience using the example of remote meetings, which have become the rule since March 2020, COVID 19 obliges.

He explains, for example, thata wall of Teams thumbnails doesn't allow you to spatialize what a particular participant is saying, whereas the same meeting in VR in a virtual room with avatars makes it easier to remember exchanges because our brains can recontextualize them by representing them in space. So far, he's right... except for the fact that spending 3 hours in a meeting with a (current) headset on is probably not yet accessible to everyone, not least because of the constraints associated with using a VR headset (heat, feeling of confinement, inability to take notes, etc.).
 

From the explosion of creative potential to economic realities:

Tools still have a long way to go, but there's an emerging trend: tomorrow's world will largely mix real and virtual experiences... Which means that virtual environments will have to be structured, and our avatars will have to dress and adorn themselves, as in the real world, so that we can be coherent in the different universes in which we can/will be present.

And this situation has a direct impact: the fact that a parallel (virtual) consumer society will literally be born, enabling us to buy the goods and services we'll need to be present in these parallel dimensions (clothing, various tools, third places, etc.). And as you can imagine, in his head as a developer (IT and business), that's TILT! Mark calls it "The Creative Economy"! A very nice term for a concept that is first and foremost mercantile!

Who will create and develop all these virtual environments and consumer products? Who do you think? 🤔🤨
 

Back to the future: 2003 VS 2021

It's a lot like what, on a grand scale, the geekiest among you experienced in one of the first large-scale online virtual universes sketched out back in 2003! I'm talking about Second Life. The major difference being the immersive vision associated with it.

For Mark Zuckerberg, it has a name, the name of a project led by Facebook: the HORIZON platform project.

If you've never heard of it, this environment launched in 2020 is currently only available to developers in beta version. The idea, for the time being, is to offer an online VR platform to developers, enabling them to develop new concepts. For such an approach to work on the scale of Facebook (a planetary scale at the very least 🌎 ), this environment needs to capture a maximum number of people and retain them. And for that to happen, new value-added uses must abound!
 

Did you say monopoly? "Our vision in Facebook is surving everyone all over the world".

So, in short, Facebook creates the tools and environments and "makes them available" to those who will do business with them by selling their creations... Simple, effective, formidable.

A bit like today when you buy an OCULUS QUEST 2 headset (Oculus firm bought by Facebook in 2014) and to use it you have to link it to your... Facebook account... Or if you want to use it without that, you have to subscribe to a Pro license whose costs are let's say "not negligible" (we go from $399 to $799 for the hardware + 1 year license).
 

We're going to have to prepare some rebounds!

Indeed, when it's your augmented glasses (AR/VR) that mediate information (video, data, app, etc.), why would you continue to buy TV screens, video monitors or even smartphones? Consumer goods that have become useless IRL (In Real Life), replaced by their digital twins, available on demand, wherever you are, to watch a movie or call your buddies!

And don't forget that if 10,000 people at Facebook are working on AR and VR ecosystems (and they're not the only ones at FB, as you can see from what Usine Nouvelle told us in 2016 about Google on the subject), it's not just for show. The stakes are truly colossal, and on a time scale that is far from geological, since, once again, it's already here and definitely will be here in 5 to 10 years' time!
 

Let's stop for two seconds and breathe!

Why are we telling you all this, sometimes feeling a little like we're playing Cassandra while sawing off the branch we're happily sitting on?

Well, quite simply because the stakes are so high, it's important to be aware of them, so as not to have to put up with them!

When you know, you can look up and ask yourself how you can use these uses and technologies to your advantage. Because once you get past the "smiling psychosis" approach (have you noticed that he's still smiling, Mark?!), there are real opportunities to be seized, whether you're a sales manager in an SME, or managing the ongoing training of thousands of employees worldwide!

Just imagine:

• Your product showroom, your production sites or your finest creations, available to all your prospects and customers anywhere in the world, at any time, without you having to move from your office chair,
• Promote a place, without having to physically go there,
• Train employees or customers by putting them in situations that are difficult or even impossible to reproduce physically without deploying significant resources and costs.
• Go back in time and space or transport yourself to inaccessible places

These are just a few examples of what virtual and augmented technologies can already do on a routine basis, without revolutionizing our daily lives. And it has to be said that the current pandemic has only accelerated the need for these new uses.
Just remember that a number of studies have already demonstrated that immersive environments really do make sense, because they are truly the N+1 degree of perception, mobilizing unprecedented cerebral channels that optimize concentration, comprehension and retention... In this respect, they are an asset in many fields.

Whatever the case, let's be careful not to play the prophet... The future is always disruptive, and takes great pleasure in thwarting predictions. It will simply be what we decide to make of it! And when it comes to VR, as with everything else, we can decide to be intelligent and take advantage of all the good that these new technologies can bring us, leaving aside (for once) excesses, drifts and derailments!

Well, I say this....

Links :

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

https://www.realite-virtuelle.com/facebook-horizon-beta-testeurs

https://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/realite-virtuelle-face-a-l-arrivee-de-l-oculus-rift-google-fourbit-enfin-ses-armes.N373274

https://business.oculus.com/products/?locale=fr_FR

For a long time now, Philippe and Roland and I have been saying to ourselves that we absolutely had to start seriously "occupying the airwaves" (free speech mode like on the FM band in the 80s! 😂). Because we've long understood that new technology isn't necessarily the most affordable thing in the world, and we feel it clearly in our discussions with you. We've often found that one of the first things to do when trying to meet your needs is to make you aware of the range of possibilities!

My apple (Hugues): Dynamic activity is my credo!

It's hard to talk about yourself, but here goes: I'm a bit like the voice of the customer, looking inwards. What do I like to talk about? In-depth topics, trends, foresight, and that's just the beginning😉.

On Linkedin.

We thought it would be a good idea to create this blog, so that we could share with you the things that are important to us and that we think should be put together:

• Customer case studies, in which we'll try to highlight the problems we've been presented with and the solutions we've been able to provide.
• Customer testimonials, so we can always remain objective about our contributions and, I hope, our added value 😊
• We'll be bringing you our latest products and services, as well as highlighting our new partnerships, because each one has its own story to tell!
• It will be Philippe's pleasure and duty to present the latest technical innovations available on the market or on the road maps of the major VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) manufacturers.
• For my part, I'll be writing a few posts on DIGITAL topics, the major trends that are making the news and all the subjects likely to be of interest to you, to help you better grasp the issues relating to these questions of today and tomorrow....

But beyond what we imagine, what's going to be fundamental for this blog to live and really serve the greatest number of people, is for us to succeed in generating interaction with you!

And to create this interaction, we need your help!  

Helping us is easy:

• Let us know from and share your reactions to what we write we write,
• Let us know what you're looking for and what topics you'd like us to cover,
• Share this first article and the content we'll be publishing regularly on your social networks to let people know we exist😉

This blog is for you, so don't hesitate to ask us questions and give us feedback, so that, just as when we work together, your expectations and questions become our challenges!

We've got lots of ideas, but we're also counting on you to spur us on!

Here we go!

And now, if you'd like to follow us 😉 :