From April 8 to April 10, I was at the Laval XR event, in Laval, France to represent Yellow Dog Man Studios and Resonite.
Here are some of the highlights of the event; even though it was mainly business-focused, there were still some wonderful demos shown around.
Despite being sent there to represent Resonite and YDMS, this post reflects my opinions only.
Student games
Before actually being on-site, I wasn’t aware that Laval is a hub in France for VR/XR activities, including lots and lots of companies, but also universities, which sent some students to showcase their yearly projects.
In those student projects, some really stood out to me:
- Forlorn: a VR experience where you are advancing in a dark environment, with only companion a lantern which provides just enough light to see a few meters away. Despite looking like a horror game, Forlorn has no jump scares nor screamers; all is delegated to a very well-made ambience with a great sound and level design. I can definitely recommend giving it a try, as it’s currently published on Itch.io.
- Ultimate Recycling Super Simulator: this one is a small game. You work at a facility populated by mad scientists, and your job is to clean up after them, easy enough. You are armed with your trusty telescopic rubbish grabber and will need to collect various items to be incinerated. The one thing that stood out to me is that those students actually 3D-printed a physical device in which to put the controllers to use the in-game tool. Sadly, it is not published anywhere, but a great experience nonetheless.
In total, there were a good 20-ish student projects present at Laval, all of them being excellent. Given those were made over the course of a few months to a few weeks(!!), it’s very encouraging to me to see all the creativity on display there.
FrenchVR
Right before the beginning of the convention, I learned that the FrenchVR community would have a presence there as a media.
We met quite often on-site, and I even ended up on their first Laval recap stream as a guest.
Overall, I’m glad I met them; I also want to thank them for having a look at Resonite and organizing events there (thanks to Loic Tomatot as well for pushing this), y’all rock!
HTC VIVE
HTC had a large presence at the event, having a large booth at the entrance of the main room. There, I managed to test the new VIVE Eagle AI Glasses.
Despite all the flashy marketing around, even if I were an AI and smart glasses’ enthusiast, it would be very difficult to justify getting a pair. From this sentence alone, you can probably guess what my final review will be.
First, no processing at all is done on the glasses themselves. That means no display, no standalone features, nothing. A phone and Wi-Fi network are needed at all times for it to work. The person demoing the glasses also confirmed to me that when outside, they will need a Wi-Fi hotspot to work.
They are basically a camera that can take short videos or photos with a pair of earbuds combined in a plastic pair of glasses, that is all. To play anything on the glasses, you’ll have to use your phone, same to pull photos and videos out.
And the AI part? It’s basically talking loudly to ask something to ChatGPT or Gemini then waiting for an answer… from the phone, of course. During the demo, that part didn’t work, funnily enough.
I already wasn’t very enthusiastic about the whole “AI glasses” thing, and this short interaction definitely killed the idea of smart glasses for me. It’s expensive for an amount of tech a phone already has, more easily.
I was told this product is made, so people get used to wearing smart devices as glasses, but honestly: who’s going to buy a 500€ Wi-Fi camera that can’t work on its own?
More than that, the privacy implications of such a device are scary to say the least, even though there are many claims floating on their presentation page.
Gaussian Splatting
On the last day, while at the food area, I was speaking with the FrenchVR peeps about this edition’s “hype word”, and we agreed on “Gaussian Splatting”.
There were at least 5 to 10 different booths presenting scanning and splatting solutions, going from well-known actors such as 4DViews, to lesser known ones.
One highlight on that side was Turku AMK (University of Applied Sciences) which are studying Gaussian splatting and had a demo in which they optimized 3D models using Gaussian splatting. They also showcased splats of outside, the ISS and even the booth we were standing at.
Some were really surprised to learn that Resonite has had Gaussian splatting support since early 2025. It definitely made some people interested in the platform.
Cool hardware
Of course, that sort of convention is the occasion to test pretty cool hardware.
Besides the usual haptic vests, markerless tracking solutions and gloves, some brought by other universities were quite interesting.
Basically, a water pouch is strapped to your forearm, and you are in a completely dark world. Your objective is to find a sphere hidden from your view, only relying on the feedback given by the water pouch to find it, with a few modes to choose from.
The first one has a pulsation to determine the distance and the direction from the object. Basically, it feels like the water pouch is vibrating. Second mode will still have the vibrations for distance, but will fill the pouch depending on direction. Third mode (my favourite), will fill the pouch for both. It’s a great exercise in passing information to the player without the traditional means of audio and visual feedback, which I could see useful in some scenarios.
Likewise, another student project was heat feedback. Through a small Peltier device strapped to the controller, they can really quickly simulate kind of a “heat texture” of a touched object. Best part? The project is Open-Source and Open Hardware. I can definitely recommend checking out their GitHub.
In the end, there was a lot to see; I ran the whole time to booths, people, etc, talking about Resonite and how the platform could help achieve what they needed to do.
The student projects were definitely the highlight of the event, given the sheer amount of creativity on display, and this alone gives me hope for the future of VR as a whole.
I’d definitely return next year, even on my own, but let’s see how everything goes first.
Of course, this isn’t everything I’ve seen in the past few days; otherwise this post would easily be 10x the length of what it is now. But in any case, I hope you enjoyed this small insight into my past week.
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