Orange’s Notre-Dame experience showcases location-based VR

“It’s in our nature to mourn when we see history lost – but it’s also in our nature to rebuild for tomorrow, as strong as we can.”

Those were the words spoken by former US President Barack Obama following the “tragedy of Paris” that saw the 800-year-old Notre-Dame cathedral burn, destroying part of the historic old lady.

But a new VR venture by French telco Orange is bringing the Lady of Paris back to life for visitors, while the city works to repair the damage caused in the 2018 fire.

Notre-Dame has stood over Paris since it first opened in 1260AD, one of the most celebrated and beloved landmarks in the French capital. The cathedral has seen the crowning of kings, queens, and even emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

It has been the centrepiece of tales from Victor Hugo’s Hunchback (later made even more famous by Disney) to the home of the Liberation of Paris in World War Two.

“It is our common heritage,” said former French president Francois Hollande.

That’s why the sight of flames engulfing the ancient cathedral on the evening of April 15, 2019, evoked grief across the globe. With it, a little bit of France – a little bit of history, even – burned.

Since the fire, Paris has undertaken a huge restoration effort to return the Parisian icon back to its former glory. Normally, the site would receive around 12 million visitors a year, but now Orange’s new VR experience, which has opened in a car park underneath the cathedral, is allowing tourists to get a feel for what they are missing, as well as raising money for the restoration.

The French telco’s ‘Eternal Notre-Dame’ was first launched in January 2022 in an Orange facility in La Défense (an area of Paris) after two years of planning. More than 5,000 people took part during its first six months, before Orange and its partners launched the current version beside the cathedral itself. Since then, the experience has attracted over 60,000 visitors, the telco told TechInformed.

The experience is fully virtual reality. It sees users don a HTC Vive Focus 3 VR headset, powered by a HP VR backpack, which transports them through the history of the cathedral, from the first brick which was laid in.

Users are guided through the 800-square-metre “Espace Notre-Dame”, with the VR map tracking movements through QR codes on the wall that link with the headset.

The project took two years to develop, including working with partners such as creative firm Emissive, and various Parisian organisations contributing to the renovation of the cathedral, including the Diocese of Paris, the special task force Rebâtir Notre-Dame, and the City of Paris.

“We had one year of meetings, including with historians and writers to make sure we found the correct narrative for the experience,” explains Morgan Bouchet, Orange’s global head of XR and metaverse from the site in Paris.

“We collaborated with the Mayor of Paris and then received approval from the historians at the Diocese to provide the story of the cathedral.”

Converting the car park was a key part of the experience, allowing users to become fully immersed in the story without bumping into walls. But this, Bouchet acknowledges, is one of the challenges for “location-based virtual reality” in general – few sites have large enough indoor spaces that are open and accessible to run a full VR experience.

“It was difficult – that’s why we waited a year before bringing the project to Notre-Dame itself and tested it in La Defense. But if you were to move it to other places, like New York, it might be more difficult to find the right space.”

This also impacts the business model. Orange is charging €30 for the hour-long experience, but, after removing costs, it is donating the remainder (around €10 per ticket) directly to the Notre Dame restoration. But to make it work, he explains, it needs to support a minimum of 50 visitors per hour.

Beyond the cathedral

Bouchet refuses to share how much Orange has invested in the project, saying the French operator was fulfilling part of its civic duty in supporting the restoration, but he also acknowledges the business logic behind setting up such a showcase.

“It was a significant investment for us in terms of people power, time and money, but it is worth it in terms of the customer experience, as well as the demonstration of innovation,” he adds.

“For Orange it’s a way to express something new,” said Bouchet. “We’re meeting with clients on the B2B side – they want to explore and understand the value of this technology and how they can use it in future. This is a good use case to demonstrate those capabilities.”

The commercial opportunities for LBVR are obvious. From education to retail and travel, the ability to walk through a location and experience it before potentially buying it means VR will feature heavily across several industries in the future.

Bouchet said that there were also potential applications in the automotive sector and healthcare, with virtual training being a key use case for both the private and public sectors.

“For example, VR commerce could be a way to minimise travel when going to one place or another,” he noted. But “We don’t want to develop a lot of VR experiences just for communication… And it’s the same for Web3 and the decentralisation topic, blockchain,” he adds.

For Orange itself, projects would see the operator work alongside production companies and partners to create suitable content for VR experiences. But the telco itself is less interested in the production and more interested in the technology that powers the experience.

When TechInformed took part in the Notre Dame experience, it was powered by a local WiFi network setup by Orange, with much of the processing power coming from the HP backpacks. But longer term, headsets will be connected by 5G – offering low latency connectivity – while the necessary processing will be done remotely on through Edge computing.

“In the Orange Lab at the Orange Innovation Park, we are exploring this scenario without the backpack thanks to edge computing. To stream the billions of polygons for the experience we need a very specific infrastructure, but thanks to 5G and fibre we can deliver it,” says Bouchet.

This will allow for much more flexibility and varied use cases, he adds.

As for the Old Lady of Paris, repair work continues, with plans to reopen Notre-Dame in time for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

In the meantime, Orange has made the experience globally available (except for China) in the form of a VR app on Meta Quest’s App Lab and the Pico VR store.

Click below to watch TI’s very own James Pearce trying out the immersive experience!

@techinformed The “Eternal Notre-Dame” immersive VR experience by telco Orange: innovation with a positive impact 🤩 Our editor checked out the Paris exhibit going through the digital cathedral replica. #tech #VR #NotreDame #Orange #innovation #fyp #eternellenotredame ♬ French music style, accordion, waltz – arachang