Insurrection 1944
2019
Insurrection 1944 is the second ISXP (In Situ eXPerience, i.e. immersive and interactive experience) I worked on at Realcast after becoming a full-time gameplay & tools programmer.
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It was developed on Microsoft HoloLens for the Liberation of Paris Museum, taking place in the Resistance command post where the Liberation of Paris was orchestrated, on the occasion of 75th anniversary of the historic event. The experience was then ported to Microsoft HoloLens 2, and it is still running in the command post to this day.
The visitors take part in the historic event as a reporter for the Franc-Tireur, a clandestine Resistance newspaper. They are guided to the different rooms of the Colonel Rol-Tanguy's command post through its corridors by the Resistance soldier Jean. In each room, the visitors must assist a Resistance member in a mini-mission to prepare the imminent Liberation of Paris.
The Colonel Rol-Tanguy's command post is buried 20m under the place Denfert-Rochereau in Paris. The humidity level in there is so high that all furniture has been removed and the place remains empty.
The purpose of Insurrection 1944 is to redecorate and fill the command post with life so the visitors can experience it in as it was at the time, despite the current conditions.
My contribution
Our team of 6, including 2 developers, completed this project in 6 months. Most of us collaborated in Unity using git.​
My role was to integrate the assets produced by the artists into the Unity project and to implement the scenario and features of the experience with the help of our in-house Unity C# development toolkit. For the first time, we incorporated 3D-scanned models with motion capture and performance capture into the mixed reality experience.
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The main feature I had to implement was our guide Jean's locomotion and navigation system based on Unity's NavMesh system, still experimental at the time.​
Because Jean's role is to guide human visitors and because these visitors cannot be constrained by the virtual world and elements, his navigation system had to be adapted: Jean is able to adjust his pace to the visitors', stop, turn around and call them when they are too far, and lastly interrupt his course and go after them if they are out of sight.
Jean also tells randomized anecdotes on longer routes between two rooms to make him more lively.
