Renault, Design Department
Technocentre Renault, Paris Region
For Renault’s Design team, innovation is not an option, it is their mission. Visualising a design, projecting yourself, engaging with the design, seeing the smallest of details of a vehicle as if it were real… This is made possible with one unique solution: The immersive room.
Choose the grain of a leather. Appreciate the curve of a wing. Perceive the nuances of a red. When Renault must make decisions to create a vehicle, every detail is scrutinised. And the more the quality of the model’s rendering is precise, the more the choices are too.
The Hearley Earl immersive room, installed by Immersion in 2011 already met this need for precision. Yet, in 2019, we went back to transform this solution using more recent and more developed technology and created a fully immersive space, with a quality of projection that is even closer to reality.
The new immersive room consists of a giant screen and a video projector. In this space, simplicity and performance come together producing a striking result.
The use of a video projector, with an RGB laser, reproduces a colour spectrum that is close to reality. Its light power is equivalent to that of a large cinema and offers a high-resolution display. The glass screen spans over 16.5 m2 and allows the prototype models to be viewed at a true 1:1 scale. It ensures a high degree of precision that has never been seen before in the field of projection.
Seeing as if you were there. Engaging with the design. Using new generation equipment to improve the work environment. Each piece of equipment installed in this room is designed to enhance the graphic quality of the immersive experience.
We were asked to replace 6 projectors with one high-performance one. It sounds like a reasonable request. However, this new type of projector requires the use of much larger screens. But what happens when the space is too small? Walls come down.
The space must be rethought, re-designed, and re-created. Our multidisciplinary team also includes architects. Therefore, we rearranged the room so that the new solution would fit the space perfectly.
The capability to project 1:1, full-scale models. Fully immersive technology to create, and to make the right decisions. A space to welcome and impress VIPs visiting the site… This is what Renault had before our recent intervention.
Today, the Harley Earl immersive room still serves the same purpose. However, the work environment has been metamorphosised, the proto-type models are more detailed, the colours truer to the original. The life-like quality of the projection is bluffing. The decisions are more accurate. The visitors are even more amazed. And the sensory experience is even more memorable. The experience is unique.