Philippe Fuchs is the French specialist of Virtual and Augmented Reality. He's a teacher in the famous Mines ParisTech school of engineering and supervised the writing of a Virtual and Augmented Reality encyclopedia in four volumes. Though his head's in pixels, his feet are deeply rooted in the ground. Philippe is an ultra-runner. It all began when he decided to swap his car for a good pair of running shoes to visit the areas where he was spending his holidays. Then he decided to run to the summer Olympic Games and succeeded in running from France to Barcelona, then to Athens.

The next Olympic Games were in Beijing. What began as a dare from his friends slowly became the craziest challenge: run from Paris to Beijing. But the athletic was not enough for Philippe. When he contacted us to enter Passion for Innovation, we decided to add a scientific and a humanitarian challenge.

Every day, biometric data from Philippe's run are collected and sent to France, where they will be used  by the French Institut Scientifique du Mouvement to consolidate a 3D biorealistic model of the human foot. This is the first time real data are being used for an in-depth study of the extraordinarily complex human foot. Our SIMULIA solutions will create the model. And each kilometer run by Philippe will be transformed into support from Dassault Systèmes to the Sports without Borders humanitarian organization.

More: we have created a 3D online application which makes it possible for everyone to joint Philippe's outstanding challenge. It only takes a few minutes to create your own 3D avatar, choose where you run and get into the greatest virtual relay in the world. Each avatar and relay created will result in more support for Sports without Borders. The fusion and confusion of real kilometers run by Philippe and virtual kilometers in the relay make up the V+R Challenge.

Want to know more and join us in the world's greatest virtual relay? Just click below!