DIGITISING HISTORY Dassault Systèmes is an industrial design company based in Paris, a pioneer in the development of 3D scanning and virtual reality. Its 3D modelling systems are used across a host of industries, from aerospace and transport, to pharmaceuticals and business visualisation. Dassault Systèmes has also used its expertise in the cultural sector, collaborating on major visualisation projects for the arts – and research organisations. “We have always used cultural projects to see how we can manage innovation, and to get our engineers to ask new questions,” says Mehdi Tayoubi, Dassault Systèmes’ VP of innovation. “We focus on industry and the B2B markets with our 3D experience platform, and help companies simulate a lot of processes. But we drive innovation by talking to new people – archaeologists and historians – and creating fresh experiences.” The company’s collaborations with cultural institutions have resulted not only in amazing experiences for the public, but also superb research tools. In one of its first major partnerships, Dassault Systèmes made complex industrial simulations of how the pyramids at Giza were built. This allowed detailed exploration of the site – and the objects found in it – through VR, as an education and research tool. The Paris 3D project came next, creating detailed, fully explorable models of the city over five periods: the Iron Age, Roman period, the Middle Ages, during the construction of Notre- Dame cathedral, and two views of the city in the 19th century. The experience was offered as a free
download on iOS devices, as well as a museum experience. Time travelling to the Paris of centuries past was also a useful tool for historians. When researchers were able to walk the streets and virtually stand in the shadow of the famous and dreaded Bastille, they were shocked at how small the legendary prison looked. Rather than a mythical edifice, which loomed in the French imagination as something close to oppression incarnate, they experienced it as a formidable, but still quite ordinary castle. These visceral insights were something that just studying a floor plan of the site couldn’t quite capture. Tayoubi’s people had been in contact with the Lascaux team for some years, and with the French Ministère de la Culture’s Muriel Mauriac, who was appointed site curator in 2009. “We wanted to create an experience similar to that of the people allowed to go inside the real cave,” says Tayoubi. “We said: ‘let’s take the raw data that has already been scanned and integrate it into our tool’.’” MAKING VR A REALITY One of Dassault Systèmes new solutions is a software kit that allows users to easily put together their own 3D, virtual reality simulations with simple building blocks. Tayoubi’s goal is to make using VR tools as straightforward and intuitive as walking into any real-world situation, and being able to interact without needing to know special commands or hardware configurations. The resulting Lascaux 3D experience, which can be viewed in a space at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (opposite the Eiffel Tower), employs Vive Pro VR goggles and a backpack computer. Users are free to access any part of the caves and interact with them gesturally – for example, using an index finger, they can control a pointer that indicates various places or objects in the simulation. They are able to see avatars of other people in the experience standing nearby, allowing for free movement – and avoiding collisions. The avatars can be customised for each person, including people using wheelchairs.
WE HAVE ALWAYS USED CULTURAL PROJECTS TO SEE HOWWE CAN MANAGE INNOVATION
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