Using Virtual Reality to Transform Museum Exhibits

This article is inspired by the exciting immersive experiences facilitated by virtual reality in museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions worldwide, including the products Onix developed for the museums of Banská Štiavnica and Anija Mõis.

The virtual tour of Banská Štiavnica is an example of Onix’s VR services for cultural institutions.

 

The development of applications like these may cost around $10,000-$30,000. It’s possible to add both VR and AR components to historic place tours and museum exhibits, develop VR-based museum experiences accessible from anywhere, create VR art pieces and VR experiences for expositions, and so forth.

 

Here, you can learn:

 

• the benefits of VR for cultural institutions, visitors, and artists
• how to implement VR in museums and beyond 
• what you need to consider before using VR for museums’ purposes

“At Onix, we believe in the transformative power of AR and VR to revolutionize museum experiences, fine art events, and expos, making them more accessible, engaging, and unforgettable,” said Roman Piskun, our Unity Department project manager.

Please contact us if you have questions or want to estimate your VR project cost.

The Advantages of Virtual Reality for Museums, Galleries, and the Public

VR experiences can be interactive or take the form of 360-degree videos. 

 

Read also: Training in Virtual Environments: 360° Video vs. Full VR

 

Cultural institutes use them in different ways for the benefit of museum-goers, art lovers, students, school children, curators, and artists.

Read also: How AR/VR Technologies Impact eLearning Effectiveness

 

Accessibility

Traditionally, art appreciation has been exclusive and often expensive. It requires travel and some planning and organizational effort. The same can be said about visiting a major natural history or science museum.

 

Inside, visitors usually encounter long queues and crowds. Too often, they may have just a few seconds per exhibit and even fail to see what they’d anticipated most.

 

Besides these difficulties for the public, this model actually contradicts the museums’ aim to disseminate knowledge and art to as many people as possible.

 

Virtual museum and gallery tours solve this problem. This innovation makes collections accessible virtually to all, especially when the digital content is available online across multiple VR platforms.

 

For example, in the 19th century, people used stereoscopes for viewing three-dimensional depictions of wars, historical figures, or magnificent world’s fairs. In the Timescope project for Somasoft, Onix helped to bring this experience into a VR environment. Using images from the Library of Congress, we helped bring history to life.

 

 

Access to art and knowledge becomes both immediate and more affordable regardless of the viewer’s background and location. This way, even people with mobility issues can access the world’s best collections without leaving home.

 

Read also: Metaverse Tourism: Benefits, Examples, Onix Experts’ Insights

 

A global survey conducted as part of the University of Glasgow’s Museums in the Metaverse project revealed an overwhelming public interest in using VR and extended reality (XR) to access museum collections, including the estimated 90% held in storage. 

 

Its findings also indicate strong public enthusiasm for digital experiences, including virtual reality exhibitions and opportunities for enhanced interaction with cultural artefacts. 79% of respondents would be interested in using digital technology, and 77% would use VR to explore currently inaccessible cultural collections.

 

Virtual reality is also praised for its ability to recreate spaces, remote destinations, or places that no longer exist, and to transport viewers there just by strapping on a VR headset.

 

For example, in 2020, Onix built a virtual tour for a museum at Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia. The completely preserved medieval town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The VR project blends scanned museum exhibits with digital panoramas to immerse visitors deeper in history.
 

 

Improved experiences

Best virtual reality museum tours can provide the experience of self-guided exploration or a private viewing, standing in front of an exhibit as long as one pleases, without rope barriers and glass walls.

 

Immersive VR experiences dramatically enhance the museums’ storytelling potential. VR can make exhibits interactive, put objects in context, show their true scale, and bring an extra dimension to museum exhibitions and collections. It changes the viewer’s perspective and builds a genuine connection with them.

 

For instance, the French Musée d’Orsay combined virtual reality technology and museum exhibit dedicated to Van Gogh’s Auvers-sur-Oise period. Van Gogh’s Palette, a multisensory 10-minute VR experience, was available from October 2023 to February 2024.

 

Donning VR headsets, visitors would enter Van Gogh’s creative world through his paint-smeared palette. There, accompanied by the artist’s favorite Wagner tunes, they would explore Van Gogh’s artistic methods, techniques, and masterpieces by manipulating colors and brushstrokes, developing a unique perspective on his artistry and a deeper appreciation for his work.

 

 

Publicity and promotion

Developing original and fresh virtual reality experiences, museums, galleries, and cultural events demonstrate their desire to innovate and reach a broader public.

 

There’s still considerable media interest and excitement about VR and XR, so a new interactive multimedia museum experience may attract even people who usually are not interested in art or history.

 

Read also: How to Use AR/VR in Marketing and Advertising in 2025

 

The MiM Audiences and Impacts Report highlighted the success of early virtual museum trials around the world in attracting audiences. For example, Musée d’Orsay’s VR Impressionist experience drew 18,000 visitors in 5 months. 

 

Horizon of Khufu, which is still touring the world’s largest cities, attracted over 250,000 visitors in 2024. The 45-minute VR experience enables people to explore the forbidden Great Pyramid of Giza as if they were really there while physically moving and interacting within a shared VR space.

 

 

The report also showed XR technology’s potential to attract younger audiences, with previous projects engaging significant numbers of visitors aged 25-34. Cultural institutions that want to target digitally savvy younger audiences should incorporate immersive technologies into their strategy.

 

Those who have visited a gallery or museum online will likely want to see more in real life.

 

Creativity

VR is a compelling case for artists looking for new means for artistic expression, expanding their audiences, and connecting with them.

 

Multisensory virtual experiences provide a new way both to convey feelings and information and to absorb them. VR can transform the ephemeral qualities of light and atmosphere into art and create lasting records of temporary experiences.

 

With VR, artists can design truly engrossing, original, and fantastic environments and simulations. Moreover, VR’s neural and muscular interface allows viewers to become active participants rather than mere consumers.

InnerVR, a meditation app built by Onix, illustrates the potential of VR art.

 

Commercial benefits

The MIM research demonstrated the public’s clear appetite for virtual access and engagement with collections. 38% of respondents are willing to pay for virtual cultural heritage experiences. Consumers can pay on both a one-off and subscription basis. 51% are interested in monetizing content created using virtual access to cultural heritage.

 

The MIM survey also underscores the transformative potential of VR and XR technologies in enhancing the sustainability of cultural institutions.
 

When applying for grant funding, organizers can create engaging and persuasive VR presentations of the proposed museum exhibits instead of relying solely on written proposals and 2D visuals.

 

Such immersive, realistic previews will allow potential funders to “walk through” an exhibit before it’s built, helping them fully grasp its layout, design elements, accessibility features, educational value, and impact.

 

By getting a taste of the visitors’ future experience, stakeholders and grant committees will be better informed about the project’s ability to engage and attract visitors and to meet funding criteria. A VR component for a grant for a small museum may thus serve as a proof of concept.

 

Whether you need a virtual reality museum exhibit’s demo or a full-blown VR museum or gallery, the Onix team is at your service: we are experts in creating immersive spaces. 

Spatio metaverse spaces are an example of VR environments crafted by Onix.

For a Swiss metaverse production agency, Onix designed and developed a series of immersive virtual environments on the Spatial.io platform. These included:

 

• NFT Art Gallery – A virtual exhibition space showcasing a collection of NFT artwork. Users can explore paintings, read detailed descriptions, and access supplementary materials like PDFs and videos. The platform also enables seamless NFT purchases directly within Spatial.
• Paper Location – An immersive extension of the NFT Art Gallery, where visitors can wander through art-filled halls, each piece telling a unique story. The space also features a cozy café for video screenings and socializing with fellow art lovers.

 

Leveraging cutting-edge technology, realistic graphics, and intricately detailed 3D models, the Onix team created visually stunning and captivating environments designed to enhance user engagement and leave a lasting impression.

Metaverse environments like this, designed by Onix, can host virtual reality art exhibitions.

 

“Our team ensured uninterrupted live streaming capabilities within the metaverse environments to facilitate online events, conferences, and presentations,” said Serhii Vitukhin, Head of the Unity department at Onix.

Read also: Meetings in Virtual Reality: The Future of Work & Collaboration

 

The virtual locations created by the Onix team collected 16.2K views on the Spatial platform. “These results demonstrate the effectiveness of our immersive environments in capturing an audience,” said Serhii Vitukhin.

 

Now, how is virtual reality used in museums?

 

Use Cases for Virtual Reality in Museums and Galleries

 

Remote VR Museum Experiences

Many museums use VR technologies to create virtual tours and programs that share their collections worldwide.

 

For example, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC created a set of online tours of the museum building, select areas at the satellite support and research stations, and even exhibits no longer on display.

Within most of the tours, virtual visitors can navigate room-by-room via an on-screen map or interactive arrows on the floor. The rooms’ panoramas were stitched together from many still photographs so that visitors can enjoy a close-up view of an exhibit.

 

The virtual tours are suitable for any VR headset type, provided they use a Web VR-enabled browser. The experience is also accessible on desktop computers and mobile devices.

 

Museum-goers have long dreamt of the ability to pick up items and examine them closely. In 2017, technology innovation and the British Museum made that possible. 

 

Two Million Years of History And Humanity, an application for Oculus Rift with Touch controllers, was free to download. Users around the world could reach out, lift, rotate, and study any of 48 unique exhibits, including the Gilgamesh Tablet and a two-million-year-old stone-chopping tool.

It’s possible to develop virtual experiences around particular artworks, too. Eye of the Owl – The Hieronymus Bosch VR experience by Pieter van Huystee is dedicated to “The Garden of Earthly Delights.”

 

Not everyone may have a chance to visit the Prado in Madrid and fully appreciate the painting’s countless figures and scenarios. The free VR game allows you to explore it at leisure in otherwise impossible detail. The multimedia experience includes animations and narration from the art history research. 

 

 

Modern technology not only facilitates virtual historic place tours and museum exhibits. It’s possible to create an entire new museum online. The Kremer Museum, launched in late 2017, is an iconic example.

 

This collection of Flemish and Dutch Golden Age paintings doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar building. “Our journey as collectors has always been about finding the highest quality artworks and simultaneously finding ways to share them with as many people as possible,” the founder George Kremer said. A virtual reality museum seems like a perfect solution.

 

The museum space, though virtual, was designed by a world-class architect and ensures perfect lighting that art lovers and collectors appreciate so much. Each painting was photographed 2,500-3,500 times using the ‘photogrammetry’ technique to build ultra-high resolution visual models. Virtual visitors can see the colors and brushwork up close, look at the back of the paintings, and explore their provenance.

If you take inspiration from Kremer’s methodology, Onix also has something to offer! Our 3D Art VR Navigation Platform blends cutting-edge technology and captivating aesthetics. 

 

Onix’s expertise transforms navigation into an immersive journey and visual spectacle that transcends the ordinary. 

 

 

 

Location-based Museum Virtual Reality Experiences

Museums using virtual reality on-premises help visitors better understand their collections. VR exhibits can enhance, complement, or simply promote physical exhibitions.

 

In 2023, Onix’s VR team helped enrich the permanent exhibition at Anija Mõis, one of Estonia’s most beautiful country houses. Now, the museum offers visitors a quest VR game to play.

 

They can rent a VR headset and instantly plunge into the game: we ensured it’s accessible for kids and adults alike and localized it into 5 languages spoken in the area.

 

The visitors play various mini-games, each set in one of Anija Manor’s rooms that we digitally recreated, trying to solve the mystery of the lady of the manor while learning local history. 

 

 

Museum virtual reality promotes scientific knowledge by combining emotion with discovery. The National Museum of Natural History in Paris opened its first permanent VR exhibition in 2018, dedicating to virtual reality a room on the 3rd floor of the Gallery of Evolution.

 

Five VR stations were equipped with the newest VR systems to support contemplative, interactive, seated, standing, or moving immersive experiences. Five participants could have the sessions simultaneously, viewing various life forms up close and to scale and explore the links between them. Their companions could see on a video screen what they were seeing. 

 

 

Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass, a part of the Louvre’s landmark Leonardo da Vinci exhibition in 2019-2020, was the museum’s first-ever VR project. It was primarily intended to solve a long-time problem associated with the iconic picture: Mona Lisa is pretty small, tucked behind bulletproof glass, and permanently sieged by tourists craving for a selfie with it.

 

This VR experience must have enabled many visitors to access the masterpiece up close in a transformative way. They could explore details invisible to the naked eye, see what could surround the artist and the model, learn about his techniques, her identity, and the history of the painting, and even fly across the surreal landscape aboard Leonardo’s visionary flying machine.

 

 

VR experiences needn’t be tied to a specific museum or gallery but can be distributed across cultural institutions and entertainment venues worldwide, as well as vamp up conferences, trade shows, and other events.

 

For example, the same National Museum of Natural History also co-produced Life Chronicles that is currently running in Atlanta, Montreal, and Sydney. During the 45-minute free-roaming VR experience, visitors learn about 3.5 billion years of Earth’s history, exploring the planet’s landscapes and witnessing most significant evolutionary milestones.

 

 

Onix also has experience in creating VR for expositions and other events. For example, we made a virtual lab experience on HTC Vive for Deutsche Messe, Germany’s largest operator of trade fairs, including Hannover Messe with 100,000-200,000 visitors per year. 

 

The VR expo experience transported visitors into a dynamic space where they could observe funny lab technicians engage in various activities and explore, experiment, and learn through interactions with realistic lab tools.

 

One of the VR lab’s notable features was a body scanner that visitors could operate for a hands-on learning experience. Interactive educational modules facilitated an engaging and memorable learning journey.

 

 

Onix also developed an AHTS VR Simulator for HTC Vive that was displayed at the CeBIT 2017 IT expo. The tech demo offered visitors an opportunity to command a 3,000-ton anchor handling tug supply (AHTS) vessel and navigate it in high seas, albeit virtual.

 

The gamified but realistic simulation used point-and-click navigation, joystick-like control for ship acceleration and rotation, and direct control for specialized actions. 

 

These included using the AHTS’s 4x2 kW main engines and the bow and aft side thrusters to take the ship out to the oil rig and holding it steady for 10 seconds, so the crew can rail in the anchor.

 

The accurate replication of a real vessel’s movements and water physics, two water guns that help against attackers, and changing weather conditions make it all more thrilling.

The expo VR experience developed by Onix included a realistic ship handling simulation, dynamic scenarios, multi-station gameplay, and advanced water, foam, and sky visual effects.

 

Virtual Reality Art

Artists have been experimenting with various media for ages, technology is evolving to support them, so the odds of encountering a piece of virtual reality art in a museum or gallery increase.
 

The market for VR art projects is emerging as well. For example, in 2017, Chinese artist Yu Hong and the Khora Contemporary production company collaborated on a work titled She’s Already Gone.

 

The artist hand-painted every detail within each episode of the virtual character’s life from birth to death, with the history of China going backward in the background.

 

According to Beijing-based gallery Long March Space, a Chinese private collector bought one of the eight editions for $100,000.

 

 

This is an example of cinematic VR that is produced by playing linear material. By contrast, VR games are fully interactive, especially with the addition of physical interfaces that enable the viewer to interact with virtual objects.

 

Learn more: Virtual Reality in Entertainment: How VR Is Changing the Industry

 

In May 2019, the 58th Venice Biennale featured Rising, a climate-change-focused work by Marina Abramović.

 

The artist explained: “I was really interested in the idea of video games and how children are playing the games that are based on aggression, violence, and fear. I was thinking about how I could reach a young audience.” She also assumed that empathy evoked in the virtual world could drive people to real-world action.

 

Rising featured the artist’s virtual avatar standing in a glass tank that water slowly fills. As the viewer approached, she would disappear, and the viewer would find themselves in the middle of the Arctic Sea, where polar ice caps are melting and splashing into the water. Back in the room with the glass tank, they could make a difference by pledging to support the environment. If they didn’t, they would watch Abramović drowning.

 

 

It was overwhelming even via a dedicated AR mobile app. With VR, when the brain believes what the viewer sees, and standing on a moving platform, the viewers would become panicky – exactly as potential victims of environmental catastrophes should feel.

 

Read also: Augmented reality (AR) app development cost

 

The artists’ ongoing experiments with VR technology and growing public interest meet at a new type of gallery – VR art galleries. For example, the ArtScience Museum in Singapore equipped a dedicated space with VR headsets and controllers for world-famous artists, scientists, museums, and film festivals to present their VR artworks.

 

 

Steps to Implement VR in Museums

Museum virtual reality development may proceed through the following project phases.

 

#1 Research and analysis

This step, also called the project discovery phase, is about understanding the cultural institution’s goals, the visitors’ needs, the market, and the competition, if applicable.

The cultural institute must formulate the business problem or problems and how a VR experience can solve them.  

 

In the case of a remote commercial VR museum application, you need to determine the future customer base.

 

In any case, it is beneficial to know the future VR app users’ age, gender, location, language, income level, education, etc. For instance, their goals and preferences in using VR in museums may determine

 

• the choice of the platform for your VR exhibit or tour
• what type of virtual environments they prefer (realistic, fantasy, amusing, etc.)
• whether they need guided or unguided VR museum tours
• what VR experience length is preferable/optimal 
• how they would customize their VR experiences

 

… and more. Surveys, interviews, and observation of visitors’ interactions with exhibits and art objects will be extremely helpful. They will help you

 

• understand their expectations and identify cognitive, affective, and physical needs to address
• identify success criteria and benchmarks
• create the VR experience scenarios
• design effective virtual environments and interactions 

 

Explore leading museum virtual reality products and find those you would like to emulate. Analyze each one’s features, the number and quality of the VR environments and storylines, competitive advantages, and shortcomings. Analyze each competitor’s business model and how they monetize the VR experiences; compare the prices.

 

To summarize your research and analysis results, you need to describe the future VR app, its functionalities, content types, individual interactions and environments, user success criteria, etc., in a single document. It’s typically called a project specification and is extremely helpful at subsequent project stages.

 

#2 Project team assembly, technical decisions, and planning

You can complete your museum VR app development in-house, hire freelancers or remote dedicated team, or outsource the project to an offshore VR/AR development company like Onix for greater savings.

Your minimal app development team is likely to include:
 

• 3D tech artist
• VR developer
• Project manager

 

Learn more: How to Hire Developers for VR and AR Projects

 

Tech specialists will select the programming languages and tools to build your museum VR applications and estimate the timeline. The experts will likely advise you to start small, with a minimum viable product (MVP) or even a proof of concept (PoC) to validate your ideas and evaluate real users’ responses to the planned museum VR experience.

 

Usually, it means creating an interface and 1-2 virtual spaces where the 3D artists and VR developers can realize your ideas. This will allow you to test your museum VR app quickly and at minimum cost.

 

Experienced developers will also help you plan and allocate the budget, including the cost of your VR app development, VR headsets and additional equipment acquisition, maintenance, labor costs, etc.

 

 

#3 VR app design and development

Step by step, the team would develop the virtual museum experience you envisioned, using the project specifications like filmmakers use scripts.

 

In the case of VR experiences based on 360° videos, the app development involves stitching together footage from special cameras that capture a historic place or museum exhibit from all angles simultaneously.

 

For example, the creation of the Anija Mõis museum virtual reality experience involved digital renderings of the museum’s facade and interiors. Then, Onix’s experts enriched the location panoramas with custom graphical elements.

Onix developed the Anija Mõis VR tour using scenario-based 360° video.

 

Read also: How to Make a VR Game

 

The creation of full VR tours of historical sites and museum exhibits is more complex, possible steps including 

 

• importing the necessary assets
• terrain creation with added textures, lighting, and other effects
• adding color grading and other features to enhance the scenes’ visual quality
• integrating the graphics into a VR project
• adding sound effects, music, or narration
• adding interactivity

 

For example, Onix’s project for Banská Štiavnica involved scanning artefacts from the local museum and solving several issues:
 

• Optimizing the scanned model of the town originally comprising 16 million polygons and 14 textures in 8K resolution, to enable the VR system to render it in real time
• Aligning the optimized 3D-scan of the city with the ground surface obtained using geo data
• Сreating realistic water imitation in real time, including a scene of a mine flooding after the explosion
• Achieving a high level of detail and variety for the mine walls with a shader that blends several material textures based on a heightmap

The creation of 3D VR museum experiences like the Banská Štiavnica historic tour requires diverse expertise and technologies. 

 

It’s best to present the first version or prototype of the museum VR experience to potential users, domain experts, and stakeholders before proper installation. This will help you evaluate its impact, defects, and market potential, make adjustments, or pivot, should there be negative feedback or insolvable issues.

 

Observe the users’ interactions with the VR app and collect user data from the app and sensors (if applicable); conduct interviews and surveys to evaluate the product’s impact and the users’ overall perceptions of the VR experience. Discuss these with stakeholders and experts and work out ways to make the product more user-friendly, effective, and competitive.

 

#4 Museum VR system installation / publication

The cultural institution must prepare a dedicated space and train employees to present VR experiences to visitors, help them put on and adjust the VR headsets and other gear, turn the app on and off, maintain the equipment, etc.

 

Before publication on the Meta Store or Steam, it’s important to optimize the app to each app store’s standards, prepare efficient marketing content, and develop the app pricing strategy.

 

Once you have a considerable pool of users, analyze user activities, reviews, and ratings. Surveys will help reveal issues and most-demanded features so you can improve future iterations of the product or modify it to target new audiences and geographies.

 

Some Challenges of Implementing VR in Museums and Galleries

 

Misapplication of VR

There is a risk of using VR in museums for the sake of it, as a gimmick, or because of another museum’s success story. The applications described above may not be suitable for your particular museum context.

 

It’s hardly feasible for a small museum or gallery to implement a virtual reality exhibition focused on a single artifact or planned for a short term. You should also consider and acknowledge the limitations of VR.

 

Museums using virtual reality should align the technology with their mission and strategy. A VR app should cohesively complement the cultural institute’s narrative and enhance the visitor experience.

 

Onix may help with research and analysis services or consultations.

Expenses

Developing a high-quality VR experience can be time-consuming and expensive. The cost depends on the technical requirements and the amount of required immersive content. For instance, the virtual recreation of the Banská Štiavnica museum took 1,000 hours. 

 

Please contact Onix if you have any questions or wish to get a quote for your project.

The same is valid for hardware. The price of equipment would be multiplied by the number of visitors you wish to serve simultaneously.

 

The VR experience may require several staff members to facilitate it: manage queues and crowds, provide information and instructions, put headsets on visitors, sanitize them after every use, charge batteries, etc. Occasionally, even sensitivity training may be necessary.

 

Visitor experience nuances

According to the 2025 MiM Audiences and Impacts Report, only 55% of respondents were both aware of and have tried VR technology. First-time users will likely experience a learning curve, so museum employees must provide support and instructions and solve any issues visitors may encounter due to errors or technology limitations. 

 

For on-premises VR experiences, cultural institutions must allocate sufficient spaces where visitors may experience virtual reality without being watched by other visitors.

 

The space must be free of obstacles or hazards or use a guardian system to mark the visitors’ boundaries in the physical world while they are wearing VR headsets.

 

Some visitors may feel uncomfortable during VR simulations or after simply donning a VR headset. VR experiences sometimes cause dizziness, eyestrain, or headache.

 

Restrictions, instructions, and warnings for visitors must be developed before installing a VR experience in a museum. For example, some VR experiences may not be suitable for children, pregnant women, people with psychosis, PTSD, a history of seizures, or other medical conditions.

 

Museums should also mark age-restricted and graphic content and warn visitors about imagery related to the Holocaust, violence, disasters, diseases, and other topics that can prompt an extreme or adverse emotional response.

 

Read also: VR Meditation App Development: Use Cases & Tips from Onix

 

Curatorial challenges

The adoption of virtual reality in museum environments raises questions about curatorial choices. It may be challenging to strike a balance between virtual and physical experiences.

 

For example, remote VR museum experiences must be realistic and impressive enough to promote a museum or gallery but not to the extent of replacing a tour of the physical premises.

 

Employees may also need clarification about their role in the changing museum environments or worry about losing their jobs to ‘virtual guides.’ 

 

Summing Up

VR helps organizations and collections increase the reach, impact, and sustainability of the cultural materials. It’s possible to create a VR experience for museums, galleries, and other cultural institutes that will be effective both within and outside their walls. So can be an augmented reality museum experience.

Many exciting virtual reality museum exhibits, historic tours, and artworks have demonstrated both the medium’s capacity and growing popularity in the field. The future trends in museum technology will likely include:

 

• increasing integration of VR and AR using Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest, and other XR headsets for enhanced storytelling
• generative AI and AI-driven personalization in cultural tours
• use of blockchain technology for secure access to digital art collections

If you have ideas for utilizing VR and AR for cultural, educational, entertainment, marketing, or any other purposes, please feel free to share them with Onix. We can make your dreams a reality – virtual or augmented.

 

FAQ

What are the ways to use augmented reality for museums’ and galleries’ purposes?

 

• A mobile AR app can provide additional information about exhibits. For example, a historic place, park, or museum can place QR codes across the premises. When visitors scan them with their smartphones, they’ll display 3D models in augmented reality in addition to an audio guide on the phone.
• A museum or gallery can incorporate AR overlay information into their website to attract visitors and immerse them in exhibits before they visit the premises.
• More sophisticated AR experiences can “bring to life” the exhibited art objects, artifacts, skeletons, and machinery or recreate entire ancient sites around a visitor.
• Museums can use AR technology to develop full guided tours or educational games, e.g., in treasure hunts or quiz formats.
• Artists can use AR to make their artwork “come out” of a canvas, bring a sculpture to life, or immerse the viewer into a unique artistic experience.

What are the benefits of using augmented reality in museums and cultural institutions?

 

• The proliferation of smartphones facilitates the implementation of AR in museums worldwide without investing in costly equipment.
• Interactive AR experiences make museum tours and exhibits more intriguing, engaging, amusing, and memorable.
• AR enhances exhibits with extra layers of information, such as historical context or interactive 3D models, promoting a deeper exploration and understanding.
• AR can provide such information in multiple languages, making museum and art collections more accessible.
• Different AR experiences enable cultural institutions to tailor tours, exhibits, and events to the needs of visitors of different ages and educational levels.  Visitors can use AR apps to further customize their experiences. 

• Innovative AR experiences may attract new visitors, particularly younger audiences.
• Digital replicas of fragile items or pieces that require restoration can reduce the need for physical handling and the rigors of transportation and exhibition, helping preserve them for posterity.

 

Can VR be used for educational purposes in small museums?

Yes, the success stories of Onix’s clients, the museums of Banská Štiavnica and Anija Mõis, prove that VR can be an effective educational tool in small museum settings.

 

How much does museum virtual reality cost? 

The cost depends on the technical requirements for the VR experience, the type and amount of content, whether custom equipment is required, possible deadlines, and other factors.

 

For instance, Onix’s Banská Štiavnica museum project took 1,000 hours and cost $30,000. The VR game for Anija Manor took 250 hours to make and cost $10,000.

 

What are the costs of installing VR exhibits in museums?

Museums using virtual reality systems on premises are likely to incur several types of costs:

 

1. expenses associated with 3D art development, app programming, video shooting, etc. 
2. the cost of hardware and gear for location-based VR experiences
3. the cost of allocating and equipping a space dedicated to VR experiences
4. expenses associated with the VR system installation (hardware setup, troubleshooting, etc.)
5. labor costs: hiring and training extra personnel, salaries, and benefits
6. software, equipment, and space maintenance, sanitization, etc.

 

What hardware is needed for VR in museums?

The type of experience you want to provide will determine the type of the required equipment. A popular VR headset plus a pair of controllers will support a basic cinematic or interactive virtual museum experience.

 

However, if you envision a truly immersive full-body multisensory simulation, you may need to purchase or order a whole system to be manufactured, e.g., a custom chair allowing 360-degree turns.
 

Can Onix develop a VR or AR application for a museum or gallery?

Yes. Onix’s team possesses the programming expertise, artistic skills, and experience necessary to create cinematic and gaming experiences for Android, iOS, and many headsets or turn original video content into exceptional VR experiences.

 

What support does Onix provide post-installation?

When the client integrates the product into the museum ecosystem, Onix offers quick fixes and builds. After a museum has displayed the product, it collects visitors' feedback and analytics and, based on that information, orders modifications or additions with Onix.

 

Several VR experiences, e.g., dedicated to different topics, are sometimes launched simultaneously. Using analytics, they select the most popular versions to retain, which they may decide to improve with our help.