Synergiz works with renowned partners including Microsoft, Magic Leap and Meta.
Crédits photos : Synergiz
Founded in 2011, Synergiz immediately set its sights on mixed reality, sensing its development potential. Thirteen years later, the French company is working with some of the biggest names in the sector, including Magic Leap, Microsoft and Meta. Synergiz will be at Laval Virtual on April 10-12, 2024, on booth A43. Interview with Lauren Herbert, Marketing and Partnerships Director.
Can you introduce your company?
Synergiz is a company based in Saint Malo that has just celebrated 13 years in business. Founded and managed by Fabrice Barbin, Synergiz is an expert in mixed reality in France and abroad. Backed by its partnerships with Microsoft, Meta and Magic Leap, Synergiz offers a comprehensive package to support its customers’ mixed reality projects. As a publisher of its own collaboration software solution (Synergiz Harbor), reseller, trainer, integrator and studio for the creation of bespoke content and applications, Synergiz supports its customers in the design and deployment of immersive projects.
Five specific use cases stand out: training, operations assistance, data visualisation, space planning and augmented visits. Synergiz currently supports national and international customers in a wide range of sectors (industry, healthcare, training, culture, retail), including Engie, Airbus, SNCF, RATP, Vinci, Stryker, UIMM, Le Centre des Monuments Nationaux and LVMH.
What will your company show at Laval Virtual 2024?
The Synergiz teams will be presenting the major advances of the Synergiz Harbor software solution, which won the Laval Awards in 2023 in the ‘Enterprise & Productivity solution’ category. Synergiz Harbor has been available since the end of last year on Microsoft HoloLens 2, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro and Magic Leap 2 devices, opening the door to simultaneous collaboration between these headsets, whether locally or remotely.
Our global approach has recently led us to develop immersive and interactive experiences on Microsoft Mesh, with the ambition of enriching collaboration between individuals as much as possible. With Microsoft Mesh, we aim to unite people around powerful causes, and develop a value proposition for organisations. Not only are we creating personalised meeting environments, but also experiences designed to inform, engage and unite around causes. Visitors to the show will be able to try out one of our Mesh experiences in a Meta Quest 3 headset. Finally, the big announcement for us at Laval Virtual this year will be to present our software solution, Synergiz Harbor, available on the Apple Vision Pro. Demonstration slots will be available.
What is your company’s current project?
Artificial Intelligence is no longer just a trend, but a tangible reality. AI and mixed reality already have a long history of working together to help users understand their environment. We have deployed a large number of projects demonstrating how artificial intelligence – and machine learning in particular – can be used to respond to major business challenges.
For example, we recently integrated AI into our Synergiz Harbor software solution, enabling users to search for 3D models using voice prompts. Users can now access a vast library of 3D models from Sketchfab, directly from Synergiz Harbor. The user makes a spoken request in natural language in any language and the artificial intelligence takes care of translating it and extracting the keywords to search for models. Once these models have been selected, they are integrated directly into the Synergiz Harbor library so that they can be viewed and manipulated just as easily as the original project models. This functionality is available with the Microsoft HoloLens, Meta Quest and Magic Leap 2 headsets. This integration provides users with fast, intuitive access to missing visual resources that are essential to their projects. Microsoft has also announced that it is combining Copilot with mixed reality to facilitate assistance for operators in the field.
What innovation do you think has most transformed the world of VR/AR?
The great innovation, in my opinion, has been to take the user out of virtual reality and into mixed reality. The see-through technology with the Microsoft HoloLens headset in 2016 enabled users to manipulate and interact with 3D elements while still being firmly rooted in their reality and seeing their environment with their own eyes.
We have also seen the emergence of virtual reality headsets that have opened up to pass-through, another form of mixed reality where the user can continue to see their environment thanks to the reproduction of the real environment using cameras and displaying the feedback on a screen in front of the eyes. Pass-through headsets, such as the Meta Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro, are also an excellent solution for offering more immersive experiences by combining MR and VR, and are therefore very popular in the fields of entertainment, culture and training. Connected glasses are another major innovation. Although they look like simple, lightweight glasses, they often include a camera, microphone and Bluetooth function, offering a range of activities that will grow considerably in the months and years to come.
The baseline of our 26th edition is “Act For The Future”. In your opinion, how can immersive technologies impact the world of tomorrow?
Year after year, immersive technologies are proving their usefulness in the professional world and are becoming increasingly popular for entertainment purposes. At a time when Western societies have never been so individualistic, immersive technologies are excellent tools for bringing people together and creating greater social cohesion. Mixed reality and virtual reality, more widely integrated into private companies and public establishments, will enable knowledge to be shared more effectively, resulting in greater intellectual wealth and more effective training. By exploiting immersive technologies, businesses will be able to combine sobriety and operational efficiency by reducing the need to travel, among other things; and Covid-19 has made it possible to develop tools for hybrid working.
There are also benefits in the field of health, such as better guidance for practitioners and, consequently, improved quality of care. Obviously, efficiency, responsiveness and risk reduction are all benefits that will have an impact on tomorrow’s world. The way in which people consume entertainment is also changing, and this trend is set to intensify in the years ahead. Spectators will no longer be passive observers at sporting events, concerts or cultural visits, but real players. Thanks to immersive technologies, they will become players in their own right, capable of immersing themselves in the event, interacting with the players or artists, revisiting moments from different angles and even immersing themselves in the history of the work or event. Immersive technologies offer the possibility of opening up new horizons of experience.
