The experience has something of the Jedi Council in Star Wars. Except that instead of seeing the hologram of fire, Obi Wan Kenobi, it is a demonstrator of the BNP Paribas Real Estate who has a real estate project. The company announced at the show Viva Tech that she was going to develop this use of augmented reality technology – which allows you to insert virtual elements in the real – for its teams based in Hong Kong, Dubai, London, Frankfurt and Paris.
After six months of testing, it is associated with the unicorn american Magic Leap. The start-up is known to have whetted the appetite of Google or Lucasfilm releasing videos of impressive demos of its technology, and then raised nearly $ 2 billion from large investors before living a real crisis. In 2016, she admitted that it had lied to its investors by rigging his videos and being well away from its rival, Microsoft. The giant is in fact one of the first to be launched in the area with the helmet augmented reality Hololens, which the latest model is stunning and is much more compact.
“Magic Leap appeared to us to be the most relevant to organize meetings at a distance between our employees and certain investors”, explains Kevin Cardona, director of Innovation at BNP Paribas Real Estate. The specialist can imagine for example a use case where a buyer wishes to visit at a distance, a tower of london, not yet built, on the side of Covent Garden. Rather than move to see a project, BNP Paribas offers to the project from their place of residence for a virtual experience using holograms.
Effect demo requires, the holograms sometimes suffer from a few discrepancies but overall, the result allows a remote meeting more fun than on a software or video calls. Magic Leap has, in fact, redeemed in may the start-up franco-belgian Mymesis, which scans and models in 3D and in real time the movements of the users. This use is envisaged by the BNP Paris Real Estate, in order to achieve cost savings and energy for its teams. Another advantage is that the augmented reality is cheaper than travelling to a rehearsal or even rooms of tele-presence. “It takes 150,000 euros for a single room full of telepresence, and as it takes at least two for a full exchange, this is quickly an important budget”, says one of the side of the BNP.
The Magic Whear Elisa Braun
Magic Leap markets since the summer of 2018 glasses the brand wants rather call them “devices” in order to distinguish it from the HoloLens from Microsoft. The Magic Leap One cost about 2300 dollars and are for the moment hardly accessible to the common man -only a few developers of non-european companies or partners may have access to it, according to the rules relatively unclear of the start-up used in the secrets .
Difficult to test, the Magic Leap impressed, however, by the depth of field that they provide. Their design trend, retro-futuristic is currently the most successful on the market. Level comfort, the outfit is nice, even if at the end of twenty minutes of demonstration, the device feels and leaves of the same sacred marks on the nose or the forehead. Equipped with eight cameras, a built-in microphone and speaker in each branch, the device has yet not even the material necessary for the calculations of the software.
The Light Pack is slipped into the pocket or the back of a jean Elisa Braun
All the intelligence is embedded in a “Light Pack”, a nice round case attached to the device by a cable that is passed behind the shoulder. Simply slide the Light Pack through a notch in its back pocket, or, if one has not, to the inside of the garment. This choice of design is a distinguishing feature of Magic Leap. The HoloLens from Microsoft on effect all the intelligence to even the helmet. “It is still a little on the stage of the first iPhone, with these technologies, but the jump taken is already impressive,” says Kevin Cardonna, who claims this experience of teleportation a approach pioneer.
