Last part of Antoine Vu's interview on Le Boudoir Numérique, the opportunity for the co-founder of the start-up Atomic Digital Design to tell more about his field of expertise, augmented reality, as well as the evolution of this technology in the future.

By Ludmilla Intravaia

Le Boudoir Numérique : In the second part of your interview (read here), you explained that in 2018, your start-up Atomic Digital Design chose to specialize in augmented reality. How did you build your expertise in this area, certainly booming but still largely unexplored?

Antoine Vu, co-founder of Atomic Digital Design: We had to adapt. The Atomic Digital Design team comes from animation film, video games, the web. All these skills had to be hybridized in order to be able to develop an expertise specific to augmented reality, which responds in particular to the new narrative codes of storytelling via the smartphone camera. We had to train ourselves, new professions having literally been born here, such as augmented reality director, AR designer, AR programmer, etc.

There is no training for these professions?

They are not yet teach in school or if so, it is very recent. We also had to understand the technical ins and outs of augmented reality, relying on our relationships with social networks, from which we use in-house technologies and with which we are very close. The platforms keep us informed of their projects, so that we can anticipate and define with them the uses of tomorrow. We also do technology watch, since we have for instance to work with the hardware of major manufacturers such as Apple.

I imagine that you closely follow the technological evolution of smartphones...

Yes. For instance, last year, Apple equipped its iPhone 12 Pro with Lidar technology (for "Light Detection and Ranging", AN). This new type of depth sensor, placed near the camera's lenses, is able to accurately understand the volumes of a room and the relationships between objects. It scans the environment to find out where the walls and ceiling are located and to identify the positioning, for example of a table on the floor, in front of a sofa, to put a virtual vase there, with the right scale ratio and a correct perspective. This technology is impressive because it reinforces the phenomenon of immersion, opening up new horizons for augmented reality.

In September 2021, you created an AR Snapchat lens to virtually try on the L001 sneaker from the French brand Lacoste. To do this, you used your GenARation tool. What is it?

GenARation is our object scanning service. It is a 3D scan that captures an object, for instance a sneaker, a perfume bottle, etc., from all angles, hundreds in fact, with a simple camera. Once the snapshots are taken, they are digitized by a computer which virtually recreates the object. The element is finally introduced into a real environment, on which it is superimposed to create a new image. In addition to a sneaker, I gave you the example of a perfume bottle because we also used GenARation for the augmented reality campaign La Vie Est Belle by Lancôme, last October. This service, launched a year and a half ago, offers hyper-realistic rendering quality which, coupled with our expertise, makes it possible to transcribe the brand's message into the language so specific of AR.

How do you see the future of augmented reality, starting with the virtual try-on?

In the short term, virtual try-on will become a formality. Tomorrow, the virtual reproduction of real elements will be democratized and so widespread that uses will evolve in the process. We mentioned mixed reality (in the first part of the interview, here, AN) and it is clear that in the very near future, potentially next year, we will start to see the use of augmented reality through glasses and this in everyday use, not just experimental. We have known the Google Glass or Snap Spectacles and other products will be released by Facebook, Apple and the big manufacturers.

Do you really believe that these augmented reality glasses will become part of our everyday life?

Absolutely. The challenge will be to create a device that is functional and transparent enough from the user's point of view, so that the latter won’t feel the weight of the embedded technology. It's all about design and that's where we come in, as a bridge between technology and the user. Not that we have to work on the hardware, or even on the software. But our role will be to design the best augmented experience possible so that the glasses take on their full meaning. Exactly as we do now for the smartphone, an extension of our hand. From the moment these glasses will be as easy to wear as sunglasses, and that they will implement these technologies allowing to add virtual content to the vision, mixed reality will be there.

* Read the first part of Antoine Vu's interview on Le Boudoir Numérique: "Augmented reality creates an illusion anchored in realness".

* Read the second part of Antoine Vu's interview on Le Boudoir Numérique: "Augmented reality sends an emotional message".