CTO of Histovery
Histovery started collaborating with Area Effect back in 2015 to improve and expand their Histopad products.
“With HistoPad, we provide you with a tailor-made Augmented Visit service for a successful digital transition of your heritage site or collections.”
The Histopad is a new way of immersing visitors into their surroundings which is interactive, educational and fun, but is also at the cutting edge of technology. At Chambord it is designed to make the days of the Renaissance come alive again for the general public as they explore and learn about the château. We worked with Histovery to improve their software and lead their team of engineers to create an Histopad factory built on top of their successful Chambord product.
I was very excited to be able to bring my video games experience and knowledge into some of the most famous and prestigious French cultural sites. As mobiles and tablets become widely used I believe it only makes sense to bring new technologies into castles and museums increasing the accessibility and enjoyment of many visitors.
The HistoPad is not just a new technology, it brings something new. It’s completely game changing for a cultural visit. It allows you to glimpse into the past and to understand the life of a monument when it was really being used, so that you can feel it. You see the architectural changes, you can hear the sounds of the horses, you can see the people who were there, reconstructed in 3D, in HD, using the most accurate historical knowledge available.
It’s a beautiful project at the crossroad of history, design, games and technology.
HistoPad Development Kit
We developed the "Histopad Development Kit" allowing the creation of standard high quality Histopad products in a short development span. In just 2 years this allowed the creation of new Histopad products at Chambord Castle, Epinal Print Museum, Conciergerie Palace, Fontainebleau Castle, Pope Palace, Airborne Museum, Rothschild Castle, Bois-Héroul estate, or Pic Du Midi Museum.
Creating a Standard Pattern
To Industrialize the HistoPad and build them faster we had to create a pattern that could receive standard content easily. We had to find a middle ground between a flexible tool and a monolithic container. The requirements were:
90% standard vs 10% custom, each cultural site is different and we had to ensure we could add custom content as well
Automated or near-automated setup of most standard content to focus our time on the custom part of each App and on the improvement of the standard layer
We had to maintain a core engine to be able to update all Apps years after years with new standard features
Automated accelerated testing to check for memory load, battery usage, stability issues and bugs
Analytics to build a back-end serving the needs of cultural site managers
To meet all these requirements I developed a unique factory engine within Unity to ease the setup of each App. I wish I could say more! But it is a confidential industry technology that cannot be shared publicly.
For this engine and its online features we received a large grant from BPI France, the largest public investor in France, as part of their CIN program, a digital innovation competition (“Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir, Concours d’Innovation Numérique”).
Other responsibilities
Recruitment for the Histovery tech team, creation of a QA & Hardware team
Improvements of the AR module to improve stabilization of the augmented layer
Analytics back-end service in GCP, events systems and front end view for museum managers
Use of deferred rendering and relighting to greatly improve the graphics of augmented rooms
Use of real-time HD graphics on mobile to allow 3D movement inside a room
Integration of Mobile Device Management (MDM) features to remotely manage our device fleet
Multi-platform development for both iOS and Android
Credits
Unfortunately at the time I’m writing this I don’t have access to all the credits for each App, but I will cite a few key people I worked with:
CEO - Bruno De Sa Moreira | CCO - Edouard Lussan | CTO - Alexis Bacot
Historical Content & PM - Maude Chastagner
Lead Exploitation - Mathilde Michaut
Unity Developer - Julien Deis ; Sébastien Abras ; Yann Guillé ; Benjamin Ledoux
3D Artist - Sven Daennart ; Léo Kerjean
2D & 3D Artist - Michèle Boyer
Lead QA - Jean-Baptiste FOREL
2015 - 2017