A hologram of Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme speaking to fans in augmented reality was produced by MATSUKO. The director will appear in 3D on fans’ augmented reality glasses along with a 3D map of the race and key information for each stage.

MATSUKO’s solution is not an animated avatar, but a fully expressive hologram. Using mixed and augmented reality and artificial intelligence, MATSUKO creates 3D holograms for remote communication between people. This eliminates the problems often encountered on video calls: lack of non-verbal cues, lack of engagement, and missing special feeling.

“If these past two years have shown us anything, it is that as humans we need each other’s presence. And even though we have come a long way with remote communication, today’s tools are still way too distant,” said Maria Vircikova, co-founder and CEO of MATSUKO. “Our brain is wired for the third dimension, and we need a sensation of people physically being there. Today we’re excited to announce the debut of MATSUKO’s technology at the Tour de France.”

Orange—a telecommunications company and a Tour de France partner for more than 20 years—collaborated on the project and is also offering a new “Augmented Race 2022” experiment that will start in villages and fan parks; this was developed in collaboration with the startups Immersiv.io and MATSUKO.