After filming the International Space Station to create the immersive journey L’infini, Studios Félix
Slowly but surely, space exploration continues. Artemis 2, which will take off in 2024 or 2025, will mark NASA’s return to the Moon, with four astronauts on board, including Canadian Jeremy Hansen.
“After Artemis 2, there will be Artemis 3, where humans will walk on the Moon for the first time since 1972, says Félix Lajeunesse, of Studios Félix
In addition to Jeremy Hansen, we will find astronauts Christina Koch and Victor Glover, both present in the immersive course L’infini, resumed in Old Montreal since Wednesday.
The Félix Lajeunesse team now has nearly a dozen people working full-time on “space technologies”. “This is a team that has worked on the development of intravehicular and extravehicular cameras and is now working on the concept of the cameras of the future. We have no choice, because we want to tell these stories, but the technologies do not exist, so we have to create them. »
What has been done with The Infinite is still breathtaking. Those who lived the immersive experience during its inauguration, in the summer of 2021, will tell you, the virtual tour of the Space Station is spectacular.
For the resumption of the installation, Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques – who himself filmed several of the shots that can be seen in L’infini – redid the course of just over an hour before meeting the media on Thursday.
Equipped with a geolocated virtual reality headset – which allows him to walk around safely while avoiding obstacles – the visitor virtually enters the Space Station. By touching with his hands the small capsules that appear on his way (in bubbles), he is projected into a 360-degree virtual universe where he shares scenes of life and work with the astronauts.
These short capsules may have left some people hungry. Félix Lajeunesse recalls that the goal was to create an immersive and non-pedagogical course. “We didn’t want to smother the walkthrough with explanatory content,” he says. The goal was really for the visitor to have the same experience as the astronauts. »
A dozen new capsules have been added to this new version, which now includes around sixty, mainly shots from outside the Station (which had not yet been processed two years ago), but above all, at the end , in an eight-minute segment, the spacewalk of two astronauts – images of great beauty captured by a camera installed on the Canada Arm.
Are there any elements that astronaut David Saint-Jacques would have liked to see, but weren’t filmed?
“It’s pretty comprehensive, but there’s one intense moment in an astronaut’s life, and that’s the arrival of another space vehicle. Maybe it’s something we could eventually film; docking a vehicle to the Space Station is dizzying. »
Asked about the importance of sending humans on a mission into space, David Saint-Jacques insisted on the importance of continuing the work of exploration, even if it is small steps.
“Humanity’s priority will never be space exploration, and that’s okay. But humanity progresses because we keep a fraction of our energies and our resources to dream, through the arts and science, and that is how civilization advances. We always want to see what is on the other side of the mountain. We must not forget that environmental awareness and international scientific collaboration come from space exploration. »
In October, the immersive journey of L’infini will be presented simultaneously in Vancouver. The one in Montreal will eventually be presented elsewhere in Canada.
Les Studios Felix
The Montreal company specializes in the production of content in virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality.
Among the original productions of Félix
Felix
It is the only company in the world designated as an “Official Implementing Partner” by the US National Laboratory of the International Space Station.
