Cranky Virtual T-Rex Greets Visitors To Down Under Dino Museum Show
August 29, 2024 by Dave Haynes
The Melbourne Museum in Australia is using three big transparent LCDs tiled side-by-side to create the hologram-ish illusion that a rather cranky 66-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus named Victoria is greeting visitors to a new dinosaur exhibition.
Victoria the T. rex is an interactive exhibition starring the real fossil skeleton of a 66-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus named Victoria. The show also has more real fossils, films, and AR experiences.
The display – three of those shower-stall like transparent LCDs tiled to create one BIG unit – was relocated to the Museum lobby because it was so getting so much attention elsewhere in the exhibit that it caused bottlenecks of people having a look.
The display experience is provided by the UK firm Miirage, which like several other companies is using white-screen video capture with clever lighting (or in this case, CGI) to create the illusion of hologram-like visuals of people, things or objects. These efforts are marketed as holograms, but are not. It is the same tech that puts a soda or beer marketing message on a transparent fridge in a grocery, and no one tries calling those things holograms.
That noted, this is well done. I like that there is a bit of a story here, with Victoria not happy about being in a cage and the faux windows showing condensation as the beast gets close.
I also think these things are substantially more clever and effective when they are dressed up with graphics to fit the environment (in this case a grimy jungle cage). Most of what I have seen using these displays just involves big white stalls plopped on a stage or exhibit floor, with the person a bit weirdly inside the thing.
As often is the case, it is the creative, not the display, that makes or breaks these kinds of efforts.
What fun!