The Creation Museum was opening a new permanent exhibit--Dr. Crawley’s Insectorium. Needing a unique exhibit concept, they turned to Balance Studios for their expertise in augmented reality (AR). Instead of using a standard printed image target, Balance Studios used the fossil itself as the AR trigger.
Using an iPad tether by a custom mobile arm in the exhibit, visitors are invited to experience an enormous prehistoric dragonfly. To demonstrate this, the main screen displays a size chart to demonstrate the difference in size of a human adult and the prehistoric dragonfly. As visitors point the device at the life-size prehistoric fossil, a photo-real 3D dragonfly “breaks” out of its fossilized state. Users can then move in as close as they want to view intricate details and hear the sounds. They can also move around the dragonfly to see different angles.