Challenge: to make people visit a complex and huge facility during a pandemic. An alternative to physical visits.
Solution: Through the following technology, we achieved a cross-platform, immersive, remote presence with a worldwide reach.
Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste is a multidisciplinary international research center, they engage in large scale projects. We were chosen to execute an ambitious project: an immersive,multiplatform and multimedia experience. An holistic and innovative approach to bring people closer to cutting-edge research.
We developed an experience that combines the last VR technology, creating both an interactive 3d website and a VR Oculus app to portray the inner workings of their Synchrotron, their research efforts and the applications for the future.
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Credits
Creative director – Pablo Apiolazza
Executive Producer – Federica Raffin
Production assistant – Erica Paoletti
Postproduction direction – Jordan Orlando
Editing – Samuele Borlandi
Front end dev – Chiara Cernoia
Back end dev – Daniele Nicassio
Oculus Immersive designer – Esteban Ponce
Programming – Joaquin Cañardo
Modelling Oculus – Ernesto Cabada
Modelling Web – Giacomo Bompan
the project
The concept
A particle accelerator is not only a building. It is arguably one the biggest machines ever made. The facilities of a synchrotron are in a way the machine.
We proposed to treat the space as a machine, making a schematic 3D view of the facilities.
A simplified, interactive view explains each part of the buildings, and it’s connections. A UX that moves from the general to the particular. Once we reach each destination, a set of videos and 360 views of the spaces is available for each space.
The challenges and usability of VR is quite different from web experiences, so for the Oculus VR app we created a different user experience, tailored for public displays, guided by an operator.
The process
Recce
We first visited the premises and created a digital twin of the spaces for reference.
Writing
From that digital twin, and together with the editorial team of Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, we started to understand the inner workings of the structure to draft the navigation and the contents.

Once we agreed on the structure of the experience, our 3d team started to create schematic views from the facilities.


Our front end team started to work on the responsive web app, the navigation and back-end customization of our proprietary multilanguage platform.
The immersive team started drafting the navigation system for this particular experience.
Oculus app
For the VR experience, instead of simply showing the 360 spaces, we wanted to convey the sense of cutting- edge technology that is performed in Elettra.
The schematic view of the website became instead an holographic room, a translucent rendition of the room, that allows users to see through and understand the flow of electrons and light inside the structure.

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