JESSICA GRIFFIN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Chief Digital Officer Susan Poulton, left, works with Jacki Wahlquist, right, development coordinator at the Franklin Institute, as she tries out the HTC Vive Virtual Reality Head Mounted Display at the Franklin Institute.
Barbara Maxwell, 79, leaning on a cane and wearing a cutting-edge HTC Vive virtual reality headset, stared with rapt attention in the general direction of a blank wall.
“I hear the sea!” she said to no one in particular. Then, looking off to her right, she met a blue whale face to face.
“Gosh, I’ll say he’s close!” she murmured. “He winked at me.”
Maxwell, of Fairmount, a volunteer at the Franklin Institute, was there to help staffers practice introducing visitors to a new virtual reality experience called the Holodeck, where they can try out the latest in immersive and mindblowing VR technology, like the Vive and Oculus Rift.
It’s part of a push into virtual reality across the museum, which plans to distribute thousands of Google Cardboard VR headsets and to place pop-up VR stations in the exhibits Your Brain, the Giant Heart, and Space Command to showcase relevant content, like brain surgery or tours of the International Space Station.
Franklin Institute staffers believe it to be the most extensive VR experience in any museum in the world. It reflects a broader investment in technology for the museum, which hired its first chief digital officer, Susan Poulton, last year and next week will launch an expansive mobile app. The “geo-fenced” app knows to toggle between an on-site mode, with features like an interactive museum map with turn-by-turn navigation (guided by 250 Bluetooth-enabled beacons), and an off-site version where viewers can access science content, including a library of curated VR science videos, from anywhere.
“The first public display of television was here at the Franklin Institute in the 1930s,” said Larry Dubinski, the museum’s president. “So that notion of making the latest and greatest technology accessible continues with this.”
Right now, Poulton believes VR is the latest and greatest. Google Cardboard, a low-cost viewing device at $15, first put it within reach of the masses, and this summer, long-awaited Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets finally shipped to consumers (at least those willing to pay a few thousand dollars for an at-home VR set-up).
The technology has been trickling into the museum world in various ways. Some, like the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, have partnered with Google to offer virtual tours via the Cardboard viewer to visitors anywhere in the world. Others have incorporated it into exhibits: The British Museum has a technology hub including VR capabilities, and the Newseum in Washington is incorporating it into exhibits, including one on refugees that opens in November.
At the Franklin Institute, which will officially launch its VR initiative Tuesday, visitors will get the chance to explore immersive content such as a walk around the ocean floor, an encounter with a blue whale, and a three-dimensional painting session with TiltBrush, a dazzling VR app that allows users to build layers of color all around them.
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Source: Philly