Spotlight on Virtual Reality

An immersive experience engages all senses—sight, touch, smell, taste and sound—and is conceived as enveloping. Even if the intention is to appear virtual, it seeks to build a coherent world that feels plausible. The term “immersive experience” is synonymous with “VR headset,” “3D world,” and “metaverse”… with users plunged right into the heart of a virtual world.

Virtual reality totally changes the way content is used and experienced

As an integral part of an immersive experience, virtual reality changes the way content is used and experienced. Extended reality goes a step further by combining virtual and augmented realities to enable interaction with people and objects.

These experiences can be applied to any domain. For example, Orange developed the “Augmented Match” experiment at the Orange Velodrome in Marseille; its Immersive Now streaming platform, where users are immersed in 360° content; the Eternal Notre-Dame immersive experience in Paris, where visitors can rediscover the cathedral; and extended reality for virtual meetings with holograms, representing the first steps toward business use of the metaverse.