WorkCoty Omnisense
Coty Omnisense
Discovering a fragrance by picking up stones: each object you hold triggers its own 3D animation in the headset — mixed reality, ahead of its time.
The context
Coty was looking for a complete fragrance discovery experience, one that could bring a scent to life beyond the store. The project arrived alongside Alice, in 2017. The concept relied on a simple gesture: picking up physical stones, each linked to a facet of the fragrance. The difficulty was timing: it needed mixed reality — seeing the real and the virtual together — while the headsets able to do it had not been released yet. They reached the market just after.
My role
I ran the whole production, including the hardware: detecting which stone was picked up, to trigger the right 3D animation in the headset. I also led the R&D to fit a ZED Mini stereo camera onto an HTC Vive headset, so the real world could be seen through it. Finally, I travelled alone to São Paulo to install the setup and demo it at Coty’s international event.
What it changed
The experience gave the project sponsor at Coty a working demonstrator to show the markets, rather than an idea on a slide. In São Paulo, I ran the demo alongside him and helped him make the case for the concept to the country teams. For the studio, it proved it could deliver a working mixed-reality setup before the market offered one — and run it far from Paris, with no safety net.
What was delivered
A complete mixed-reality setup: an HTC Vive headset fitted with a ZED Mini camera for passthrough, detection of the stones being picked up, 3D animations tied to each stone, and video-feed processing optimised down to assembly code to keep latency in check. Delivered installed and running in São Paulo.
What remains
Working before the technology is ready forces you to understand the whole chain: once you have written assembly to win a few milliseconds, you never confuse a demo with a product again. And travelling alone to install it on the other side of the world teaches one simple thing — a setup must be something a single person can rebuild and repair.