Crédits photos : © Ultimate Recycling Super Simulator
Winner of the #Students competition at the Laval Virtual Awards 2026, the virtual reality game Ultimate Recycling Super Simulator, created by MTI3D students at Arts et Métiers de Laval, took home the prize awarded on 9 April at the Espace Mayenne.
Held in Laval for 28 years, Europe’s largest XR event recognises the most promising XR projects each year across a range of categories. The #Students competition, which this year brought together 20 projects from 8 different nationalities, honours a game built entirely from scratch, custom physical device included, in just two weeks.
A job offer gone wrong
The pitch fits in a single sentence, written like a twisted job ad: congratulations, recruit, you’ve landed the job of the year, supreme maintenance agent for a mad scientist. Armed with a telescopic grabber, the player must hunt down every piece of rubbish lurking in the laboratory to satisfy their beloved employer. A straightforward hygiene stroll, on the surface. But between dubious waste and blinking machines, the atmosphere quickly starts to crawl in the shadows of the room.
The aesthetic the team claims as their own is that of a “Russian mad scientist”, a blend of unsettling, funny and offbeat. A deliberate choice made from the very start of development: “We first thought about an artistic direction around this Russian, slightly disturbing style, with a bit of humour, but also the mad scientist side,” the team explained on stage.
A device built in two weeks
The project was born from an internal school competition called RV Team. Seven students, five of whom were present on stage at the ceremony (two were on internship at the time), divided up the roles: three developers, three 3D artists, and one person dedicated to computer-aided design and 3D printing. The game’s physical device, a telescopic grabber designed to feel natural to handle without resembling a standard controller, was built entirely in two weeks, with the Quest controller integrated internally.
“We wanted something that felt natural, like the grabbing tool you see on screen, but without necessarily feeling like a controller,” the team summed up. A choice that paid off: the jury praised a device that was light, pleasant to the touch, designed with genuine attention to safety, and finished to a level far beyond what the entry video had suggested.
The coordination puzzle
With seven people of varied skills and a tight deadline, coordination was not always straightforward. “At first, we didn’t necessarily agree on everything, but we took the time to discuss it, because agreeing on a direction is very hard. Once we were all aligned, we knew it was the right thing to do, and then we saw whether it worked. And we were really happy that it did.” On stage, the team made a point of including the two absent members, on internship at the time of the ceremony, in the victory, and paid tribute to all twenty student projects in the running this year.
Next stop: Japan
The #Students prize opens the door for the team to the IVRC (International collegiate Virtual Reality Contest), the student competition held in Japan since 1993, with which Laval Virtual has maintained a partnership for 22 years. The team will travel there in September to present Ultimate Recycling Super Simulator to a Japanese jury, continuing an exchange that sees prize-winning projects travel between the two competitions each year.
