PICO, a developer of cutting-edge virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) headsets, is demonstrating the capabilities of its professional-grade hardware at the Cannes Festival.
Through strategic collaborations, PICO's technology is supporting a range of high-profile cinematic and generative projects at the event, including The Black Mirror Experience, YELLOWFIN, and The Pirate Queen: No Safe Waters.
Large-scale free-roam with The Black Mirror Experience
A highly anticipated project featuring PICO hardware is The Black Mirror Experience, the first major intellectual property to be adapted for large-scale, free-roaming VR.
Produced by Banijay Live Studio and Univrse, the interactive installation allows audiences to step into the dystopian world of the hit Netflix series. Participants find themselves in a near-future setting where new technology comes with unexpected twists, and their choices carry serious consequences.
Billed as a "generative experience," visitors are active participants rather than passive spectators, shaping their own paths through their decisions and interactions, ensuring no two journeys are the same.
The Cannes setup accommodates up to 66 simultaneous visitors for a nearly 40-minute session using the PICO 4 Ultra Enterprise. The creative partners cited PICO as a "highly reliable platform" for their demanding setup due to its "strong balance of performance, comfort, and enterprise-ready features."
The team highlighted that the precision of PICO's inside-out tracking system allows them to "deploy seamless free-roaming multi-user experiences efficiently, without the complexity of external sensors or heavy infrastructure."
Ultimately, PICO's enterprise ecosystem and lightweight ergonomic design were selected to ensure stable, scalable operations for high visitor throughput.
The Black Mirror Experience was created on the XRoam platform.
Communal cinematic VR in YELLOWFIN
PICO headsets were also used in the Immersive Competition at the 79th Festival de Cannes, with the world premiere of YELLOWFIN.
Directed by E del Mundo and produced by Screen Asia and Create Cinema, the 360° cinematic VR film marks a significant milestone for Philippine and Southeast Asian immersive cinema.
The film follows Popi, a Filipino fisherman who returns from years of imprisonment in Indonesia to find his wife has started a new family. Lost and isolated, he journeys across the Celebes Sea, where reality gradually gives way to myth as he encounters a stranded Indonesian coast guard, hidden gold, and a wounded mermaid.
Blending documentary realism with mythic eco-fantasy, the project immerses audiences in coastal communities while reflecting on overfishing, consumerism, ecological destruction, and loneliness.
To present the film, the creators utilised over 100 PICO headsets synchronised with external surround-sound speakers to create a large-scale, communal immersive cinema environment.
Calling the collaboration "empowering," the production team noted that PICO was vital for the setup because the headsets allowed "immersive cinema to function at a large communal scale while still maintaining clarity, comfort, and presence for audiences."
The platform helped elevate the cinematic experience, making the story "more immersive, vibrant, and clear" by bringing viewers directly into the film's emotional and environmental core.
Spatial review for The Pirate Queen: No Safe Waters
Beyond direct audience exhibition, PICO's technology proved vital behind the scenes for Singer Studios' The Pirate Queen: No Safe Waters, which is also world premiering in competition as part of Cannes Immersive.
Written, directed, and produced by Eloise Singer, and produced and narrated by Lucy Liu, the experience transports audiences into the world of Cheng Shih, the most powerful pirate in history, who rose from marginalisation to command a vast fleet in the South China Sea.
Building on the award-winning success of The Pirate Queen VR—which won awards at Tribeca and Raindance and garnered Emmy and PGA nominations—the final presentation at Cannes is a large-scale, four-wall and floor projection-mapped installation rather than a headset experience.
PICO headsets served as an essential creative tool during the project's development.
Singer, founder and CEO of Singer Studios, explained that PICO headsets provided a "practical and reliable way" to review the project in spatial terms long before they had access to the final physical space:
"They allowed us to make creative decisions around scale, perspective, pacing, and audience experience in a much more intuitive way," Singer said, noting that for an installation built across walls and a floor, this early spatial review process was "incredibly valuable."
Founded in 2015, PICO continues to empower creators, businesses, and attraction operators globally, providing the robust hardware and enterprise tools needed to bring complex immersive storytelling to life.
Modular infrastructure with the Hybrid Immersive Destination Framework
Also debuting as an industry showcase at the festival is the Hybrid Immersive Destination Framework, a new operational system developed by UNIVRSE and XRoam, in association with OASIS Immersion.
The framework allows venues to operate both projection-based immersive experiences and location-based VR (LBVR) within a single modular infrastructure, enabling rapid reconfiguration of spaces depending on operational needs.
Within this system, PICO headsets provide the crucial LBVR execution layer. The development team called PICO's hardware "dependable," noting that the headsets offer a "stable and high-performance VR foundation for LBVR deployment."
They highlighted that PICO's inside-out tracking ensures "consistent spatial accuracy" with "minimal setup complexity," allowing the system to innovate by using projected reference points for tracking rather than permanent physical markers.
Following its Cannes presentation, the framework will see its first full-scale public deployment at OASIS Immersion in Montréal with BODYVERSE, an interactive scientific storytelling experience designed for multi-generational audiences.
Other recent projects that feature PICO headsets include L’Ombre, a live, immersive mixed reality (XR) stage show that was selected for Venice Immersive, the XR section of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival of La Biennale di Venezia.
