350+ free-roam venues with happy operators!
350+ free-roam venues with happy operators!
While on our holiday break in Melbourne, Australia, I attended the grand reopening of the immersive Van Gogh exhibition at The Lume. The Lume is one of the original dedicated immersive projection locations. It was started by Grande Experiences, one of the pioneers of immersive digital storytelling. They also have a location in Indianapolis.
Van Gogh Alive is the most visited immersive experience in the world. But it, like most of the projection-mapped experiences, is showing its age. Customers want interactivity, and passive screens, no matter how large, get stake quickly. To combat that The LUME added some new interactive elements. One of the popular ones was this 5 minute drawing experience, which was basically some easels, pencils, paper, and a YouTube video on a loop showing people how to draw like Van Gogh.
To attract a new audience, Grande Experiences partnered with Univrse out of Barcelona to add a new virtual reality component to the exhibit. (Disclosure: Univrse is a client of Bob Cooney, who owns the VR Collective and writes this newsletter.)
Univrse is the same company that developed the Erica Lust erotic experience I wrote about in the November 11th edition of this newsletter. If you missed it, it’s worth a read; it’s my most commented-on post. The new Van Gogh VR experience is called Finding Vincent. And it might be the best free-roam VR storytelling I’ve done where nobody takes their clothes off.
The experience takes visitors on a historical recreation of Theo, Van Gogh’s younger brother, as he searches for Vincent after his infamous run-in with Gaugin when he cut off his ear and was sent to a mental hospital. Visitors overhear conversations and find documents that offer clues to Vincent’s whereabouts. The relationship between Vincent and Theo is heartwarming, and the experience is quite moving. Univrse designed an experience that makes it feel like you’re wandering around inside Van Gogh’s most famous paintings. It felt like a micro version of Meow Wolf.
I interviewed about a dozen people who went through the experience, and their responses were overwhelmingly positive. One woman was brought to tears. The age range of participants was from about five up to 80 years old. Many groups were going through with 3-generations of family members. Here’s one of the interviews.
The Immersive Van Gogh experience lasts about an hour, and the Finding Vincent VR experience ads about 15 minutes. It costs an additional $20 per person on top of the $40 regular admission (Australian Dollars.) The cost of an extensive projection experience costs many millions to build out. At over 20K square feet, the rent cost alone is massive. The VR experience took up only 2500 square feet of the exhibition. They ran it with about 3-4 employees, and I witnessed up to 20 people in the experience at a time. They had about 30 HTC VIVE Focus 3 headsets for the entire operation, which cost well under $100K to deploy.
So for those of you that are mathematically challenged:
Considering the outsized impact of the experience and the rave reviews, with the development and deployment costing a fraction of the projection experiences, it’s no wonder immersive experiences are increasingly turning to virtual reality to increase customer engagement and satisfaction.
Over the next few years, you will see an ever-increasing number of free-roam VR experiences in art and cultural touring exhibitions, museums, and cultural centers. You will also start seeing longer interactive VR experiences that act as anchor attractions, replacing the passive projection experiences. Customers expect interactivity, and VR is perfect for delivering on those expectations.
Felix and Paul recently announced a new Immersive Space adventure called Interstellar Arc, opening at Area 15 in Sept. At over 20K square feet and two years in development, it promises to be, ahem, stellar. Eclipso has six dedicated free-roam centers, each encompassing 10K square feet. Excurio’s Horizons of Khufu is running at about a dozen sites, with reports of more than 200K tickets sold in its year-long run in Montreal at C$40 per ticket.
Pay attention to this space. Part of the reason I write this newsletter is to highlight how VR is used in different LBE centers. I don’t want you to miss out on this trend. Art, culture, and storytelling are the future of VR. This is why I’ll be moderating a powerhouse panel on the topic at the VR Arcade and Attractions Summit. The Agenda is up on the website, and tickets are on sale.
