City Emulator is a project that was born in November 2020 in response to the COVID-19 crisis and led by Emmanuelle Spriet-Toussaint, C.E.O. of E-voyages Ltd based in the UK and Arthur Gourlot, Finance and filming industry expert, based in France. E-Voyages is a company specialised in sustainable tourism in Great Britain and Ireland managed by Emmanuelle Spriet-Toussaint. It has been an active member of the United Nations Global compact for over 5 years and is placing the key SDG’s at the heart of its mission to make tourism more responsible and ethical. It has now added “social enterprise” to its status and is making corporate social responsibility a priority. Arthur Gourlot, an entrepreneur whose area of expertise are Finance and the filming industry in France is also a data analyst and has been leading various research and studies over the last 5 years on the AR/VR technologies and its future role. The current COVID-19 crisis has led to a brutal halt in trading for many sectors of the economy: primarily the Sports, Cultural, Retail and Tourism sectors. With this in mind Arthur and Emmanuelle came up with the City Emulator project which is designed to help all the sectors impacted by COVID-19 crisis to survive and has become E-voyages’ main pivoting project. City Emulator’s ambition is to recreate a virtual city and to connect the end users with the various sectors of the economy hit the hardest by the pandemic by offering them an opportunity to experience virtual tours of the sports stadiums, museums, independent retailers and enjoy being connected once again with their favourite activities. We would like to offer a new way to help us resume all interactions we had in real life but in a safe environment and without any health risks. We wish to build an interactive European platform encompassing technologies such as 360/VR/AR from the touristic, cultural, sport and retail sectors. The City Emulator project is being developed in three main stages: Phase 1 of the Development : Creating a European platform to relaunch our social, cultural and economic industries through 360/VR/AR and with interactive means that will have two main objectives: *To Create a database of all existing VR content from sport, cultural and commercial sectors and hence we can become the reference search engine and marketplace for all interactive 360 and VR content; *To create exclusive content thanks to our custom-made shooting/project solutions and thus add value to these exact sectors. Phase 2 of the Development : This database will be used as a matrix to create cultural, sports and shopping districts that we will have gathered in a playful and practical way made in a digital and interactive world. Phase 3 of the Development : The long term plan is to create interactive and digital cities based on all the content of our database. As a company that is experiencing the full brunt of the economic crisis, this grant request will enable us to pivot our business towards innovation. It will allow us to survive the health crisis while offering a responsible and ethical service specialising in the revival of the various sectors in crisis. The unprecedented context of a long-lasting health crisis, in which we find ourselves, makes individuals emotionally and psychologically fragile. It becomes necessary and urgent to find a solution that is able to bypass the problem, while waiting for an eventual "return to normal", and thus to relaunch the worlds of culture, sport, retail and tourism. Moreover, this project aims to promote social distancing between people. This leads to a decrease in the use of vehicles and therefore a reduction of unnecessary travel and CO2 emissions. This project also allows to rethink ‘mass tourism’ towards a selective and free digital tourism. It also leads to a new way of consumption regarding cultural, sports and commercial places allowing to promote digital interactions within these places. The access to the website for self-employed individuals facing financial difficulties will not be invoiced, as part of our values and commitment. We focus on our approach which is group survival and the notion of community. We want our solution to be suitable and adaptable to a maximum number of partners. We also want to make it intuitive and therefore accessible to everyone. We will accept all 360/VR/AR and interactive content, in a non-competitive approach. The goal is to be identified as a search engine for VR content.
Being a CIC CreaTech to Watch 2021 will increase our exposure and give us recognition.
