Three days, 26 hours of development, and a sleepless night: a look back at the December 2025 edition of Hackathon.
Crédits photos : Kévin Rouschausse - Laval
From December 10 to 12, 2025, Laval hosted a new edition of the Laval Virtual Hackathon, deliberately organized outside of the annual spring event. The goal was to give the Hackathon its own timing, visibility, and a setting more conducive to experimentation.
Detached from the intense pace of the April event, this December edition allowed us to refocus our attention entirely on the students, the projects, and the technologies explored, while strengthening the support provided to the teams.
For three days, eight teams of students from all over France gathered in Laval with a common goal: to imagine, design, and prototype an interactive immersive experience, within a limited time frame, based on three technologies discovered on site.
During this edition, students were able to use the “HOLOSYS” solution from 4DViews, a Hackathon partner, for volumetric video capture, as well as Chat3D software, a solution for generating 3D content using artificial intelligence, and PopcornFX, a visual effects (VFX) editor, also partners of the event, to develop their projects.
Hologames: humans integrated into gameplay thanks to volumetric capture
The theme of this edition, Hologames: Volumetric Humans for Interactive Entertainment, invited teams to rethink the games of tomorrow and immersive interaction.
The HOLOSYS volumetric video capture system structured the teams’ work from the start of the Hackathon, serving as the basis for all the experiments. Each student was captured and reconstructed in three dimensions, like animated figurines, providing common raw material that the teams then had to integrate into their projects.
Three days to get into the Hackathon groove
The Hackathon took place over three days, each marking a key stage in the teams’ journey.
The first few hours were devoted to launching the event. Welcoming participants, presenting the theme and objectives, initial discussions, and masterclasses led by partners enabled the teams to quickly get to grips with the challenge. This initial phase concluded with volumetric capture of each student, which was essential for the rest of the work.
Once these foundations were laid, the pace picked up. The following day was devoted entirely to development. The teams focused on designing and creating their immersive experiences, moving seamlessly between programming, integrating volumetric captures, testing, and making adjustments. Time pressure quickly became apparent, pushing some projects well beyond the end of the day. For many teams, it was a short night, and for some, a sleepless one!
On Friday morning, the Hackathon entered its final stretch. Development continued until the end of the morning, before giving way to presentations to the jury. Despite fatigue, each team defended its project, the result of 26 hours of development.
Eight projects, eight interpretations of interactive immersion!
At the end of the Hackathon, eight projects were presented to the jury, each offering a unique interpretation of the Hologames theme.
• UCO Laval: An immersive investigation inspired by Cluedo
The big winner of this edition, the UCO Laval project immersed users in the role of an investigator. Observation and exploration structured this experience, designed as an interactive investigation scene. The experience incorporated volumetric captures on two scales: some were human-sized, represented spectrally, and others were used as pawns on a game board.
• Les Gobelins: Letting Go
A sensitive and introspective game, in which progressing meant letting go of the virtual reality headset controller, like an anchor in the environment, a metaphor for letting go. A powerful mechanic, serving as a reflection on memory and remembrance.
• Nantes Atlantique School of Design (Laval campus): Find My Crew
A playful universe combining hide-and-seek and dollhouses, inviting players to explore a stylized environment rich in detail and surprises. Discover a preview of the experience.
• IIM Digital School: DJ Simon
An immersive musical experience where memory played a central role. He had to correctly reproduce sound and visual sequences. The player was then invited to take to the turntables to mix the music and get the dance floor pumping.
• YNOV Rennes Campus : Not a Chess Game
A reinterpretation of chess incorporating real players captured in volumetric video, blurring the boundaries between strategy, game, and human presence. The movements of the pieces on the chessboard then controlled the movement of giants in the environment.
• L’IUT de Lannion : Mimic VR
A fun game based on imitating gestures, simple in appearance but particularly effective in its intent. The referee was then asked to choose the player who gave the best imitation.
• École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers (Laval campus): Ghostbusters
An asymmetrical game proposal, where one player is immersed in VR and the second supervises operations from an external monitor. Immersed in an environment inspired by the animated series Arcane, players had to investigate to find possessed objects.
• L’ESIEA : Bald’où
A quirky take on “Where’s Waldo?”, in which players had to find a bald, fast, and elusive character. A deliberately absurd and highly acclaimed project with a scale-changing mechanism that allowed players to dive into the scene in pursuit of the character.
Prizes to extend the adventure beyond the Hackathon
The winning team had the opportunity to win:
- a booth at Laval Virtual 2026, to present their project at Europe’s biggest XR event;
- one year of software, including:
- 5 licenses for the visual effects editor, PopcornFX;
- 5 licenses for the 3D generation platform, Chat3D.
- The opportunity to return to the Laval Virtual Center to complete the volumetric captures in order to finalize the developed application, with a view to exhibiting it at Laval Virtual.
Funding designed to enable the project to continue developing and move on to the next stage after the Hackathon.
In addition to these prizes, all participating teams were offered tickets to the next edition of the Laval Virtual trade show, giving them the opportunity to discover the event, meet industry players, and extend their Hackathon experience within the ecosystem.
A demanding, educational, and resolutely human format
This December 2025 edition confirmed the purpose of the Laval Virtual Hackathon: to provide an intensive learning environment that closely reflects the realities of immersive creation.
Working under time constraints, experimenting with advanced technologies, collaborating as a team, and defending a project before a professional jury were all key experiences for the students, going far beyond the 26 hours of development.
What’s next? Head to Laval Virtual from April 8 to 10, 2026, to discover a host of immersive experiences at the heart of the exhibition (and the winning project!).
