The Musketeers

360° video applications for Intermarché, Netto, BricoMarché, Roady, Poivre Rouge

Development

Unity

Plateforme

Samsung Gear VR

The « Les Mousquetaires » group brings together more than 3,095 independent entrepreneurs. Several of its members have decided to promote their stores using virtual reality headsets and 360° videos, which can immerse their customers in worlds close to their activities.

It is in this context that in 2017 we developed virtual reality applications using Samsung Gear VR headsets for several of the group’s brands such as :

Agro Mousquetaires
Intermarché
Netto
BricoMarché
Roady
Poivre Rouge
Le Moulin de la Chaume

Objective of the project

The objective was to create an immersive application using 360° video and Samsung Gear headsets. The aim was to create the most ergonomic application possible; in other words, when putting on the VR headset, the user should be immediately immersed, without going through the Oculus interface.

The operation can be described as follows:

a) The operator presses the application icon and puts the smartphone into the headset (this functionality would no longer be necessary today thanks to the use of the Oculus Go, which has the smartphone built in)

b) Once the user has the headset on, the application launches and opens a 360° photo. In the middle, in the centre of the user’s view, a thumbnail appears as a button to access the 360° video.

c) The application allows the user to go back with the « back » button or to access the video playback.

Our job : 360° video application

We produced this application in collaboration with the company Visages, owned by Bertrand Levet. The company Visages was in charge of producing the 360° videos for each of the brands, and of customer relations.

Our role was the development of the application with the integration of the 360° videos for each brand.

In order to reduce development costs, as the production of seven VR applications can be very expensive, we decided to create a single application that could be used as a basis for all the others. With each new application, we simply had to change the video and the thumbnail.

Technical challenges :

The smartphone used for this performance was the Samsung Galaxy 6, the latest model from Samsung.

The very high quality of the 360° video (very high resolution, very high audio bitrate, etc), and the cooling system failures of the Galaxy 6 model, heated the smartphone to such an extent that after 2 or 3 minutes the application stopped working.

We had to develop some algorithms to adapt the video bitrate in real time based on the temperature of the phone.

Our role was the development of the application with the integration of the 360° videos for each brand.

More information of the project :