MasterWorks: Journey Through History

Explore cultural heritage in virtual reality.

Released for all major VR headsets in 2018. Rated E for Everyone .

I took a break from hands-on game development to create software development tools at Unity Technologies. But when modern virtual reality headsets burst onto the scene, I knew I had to jump back in the game.

MasterWorks was a collaboration between our team at FarBridge and the amazing folks at CyArk , whose entire mission is to capture, share, and archive the world's cultural heritage. MasterWorks has been released for the Oculus Rift, Go, Gear VR, HTC Vive, Vive Focus, and more virtual reality compatible devices.

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MasterWorks: Journey Through History

masterworks journey through history

The MasterWorks Museum transports you to four fully explorable environments where you can collect artifacts and learn from archaeologists and scientists as you unravel the mysteries of who built these amazing places and learn about the challenges they face today in a rapidly changing climate. From the product description

About the Experience

I admit I was a bit confused when I first tried MasterWorks: Journey Through History . You launch it and go straight to Mount Rushmore (South Dakota, USA). You aren’t just at the monument, you’re actually within the sculpture, big noses surrounding you.

masterworks journey through history

I’ve been to Mount Rushmore in person and didn’t get anywhere near as close as this! You can see the chisel marks clearly and get a sense of its scale in a way that you really can’t from the ground.

As for my confusion, I didn’t realize that this was just the first of four scenes available! In addition to just walking around (like with Blueplanet ), you have goals to complete (somewhat along the lines of BRINK ) centered on activating all of the informative spots.

Graphics and Sound

The captures are mostly tremendous quality. I say mostly because you do need to stay in the right areas. As with all photogrammetry, you don’t want to peek behind the curtain! If you get to an edge, you’ll see low-quality surfaces and even holes to the void. This is always the case, so apps usually are very careful to keep you within the curated spaces. It seems that with MasterWorks: Journey Through History , they were a little bit more liberal with your viewpoint. I don’t mind it too much since it enables better perspectives, but it could be jarring to some.

Another shortcut you might notice is that walls will often be flat with a texture (think of wallpaper) of bricks shown on it. As long as you aren’t too close to it, you might not even notice it. It definitely shows the amount of optimization that went into making the experience. This title is already four years old, so the tools used to create VR apps have progressed. There’s always a certain amount of work that goes into achieving the balance between a large space and high quality. The larger the space, the more you may need to reduce details in some spots to make everything work well on different systems and headsets.

The areas here are pretty big though. Visiting Ayutthaya in Thailand, the three stupas are captured excellently, as well as the surroundings of the temple. The Balcony House cliff dwellings in present-day Colorado let you walk around the alcove, entering the rooms and descending into the kivas. Visiting ChavÍn de Huántar in Peru means walking around several areas with stone walls and covered areas.

masterworks journey through history

Some of the spots also have an option to visit a 360° 3D photo. These are nice in terms of additional areas to see, but the quality isn’t as good. It’s not as sharp as it could be, but worse still, the left and right images don’t always work together which leads to some distortion, plus the seams can be very noticeable sometimes (360° cameras work by merging together the views from multiple lenses pointing in several directions. where one view merges into another is referred to as a seam). Considering how expensive these cameras can be, it’s a little surprising.

Information Content

In each area, you’ll see rays of light pointing toward the sky. These represent points of interest. Some of these are represented with speakers, and others with floating items. At these spots, you can listen to scientists discussing the significance. One to three recordings may be found at a given spot, and each is somewhere around 30 sec to a minute and a half. All told, listening to all content and exploring at my own speed, it took me around an hour to take in everything.

masterworks journey through history

You don’t actually need to listen to the recordings or learn about the relics if you aren’t interested (your loss!). There’s nothing stopping you from just wandering around. I’m not sure if you can disable the floating points of interest and beams of light if you don’t care about them, but I know there’s an option once you complete them.

The data for Masterworks: Journey Through History is courtesy of CyArk . Along with UNESCO , they have a mission to help preserve historic and cultural heritage sites around the world. I’ve talked about these efforts in a previous article . Not only do they make their data freely available, there’s an enormous volume of information, photos, and volumetric scans. You can explore much of this directly in a web browser, but it’s great seeing it transformed into VR experiences as well.

Navigation and Interactivity

Navigation takes place by clicking a button on your controller, pointing to an area of interest, then releasing the button. Not all areas are accessible, so the ground will change color to indicate allowed destinations. In some cases, triangles will point toward an upper or lower spot that you can visit. Overall, this method of movement works well. In very large areas, you may only be able to move a certain distance at a time, but it doesn’t really slow things down.

masterworks journey through history

I found that they did a good job of allowing you to move around naturally (depending on your play space) and with teleport. There’s no nauseating smooth movement, and since you can point at items to interact, it should pose no problem to someone with mobility or reach constraints.

Once you finish an area, there is a museum that serves as home base. From here, there is a room for each destination, a model of the entire site, and pedestals where your relics go after learning about them. These rooms look really good.

masterworks journey through history

There’s nothing to interact with other than activating the points of interest. I would have liked to be able to hold the floating artifacts in my hand to examine them closer but couldn’t find a way to do it. I also didn’t see the smaller touches of loose rocks or birds flying by that you see in some immersive productions like this.

Updates and Support

It looks like they released their initial version in 2018 and followed up with a release for Vive in 2019. It doesn’t appear that any further updates have been done. It would be amazing to see more world heritage sites added to this as time goes on. There’s so much to choose from!

Overall, Masterworks: Journey Through History is an excellent title. Four world heritage locations with lots of informative details for the great price of free! It would be great to see an update to take advantage of newer VR techniques and hopefully add more locations, but it’s already an excellent choice for some world exploration. There’s really not much to mark it down for so I’m giving it five stars!

  • Generally high quality captures
  • Good accompanying informative content
  • Great selection of locations
  • Quality could still be improved in a few spots
  • A little more interactivity would be nice

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MasterWorks: Journey Through History

MasterWorks: Journey Through History

DEVELOPER DESCRIPTION

Travel to three continents and visit some of the world’s most amazing places that span over 3000 years of human history. Discover the fate of the ancient capital of Thailand, the mysteries of a pre-Incan temple in the Peruvian Andes, the astonishing Native American cliff dwellings of Colorado, and the monumental stone carvings of Mt Rushmore in South Dakota. The MasterWorks Museum transports you to four fully explorable environments where you can collect artifacts and learn from archaeologists and scientists as you unravel the mysteries of who built these amazing places and learn about the challenges they face today in a rapidly changing climate.

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 MasterWorks: Journey Through History

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masterworks journey through history

VR Tour App ‘MasterWorks’ Uses Photogrammetry to Bring You to 4 Fully Explorable Heritage Sites

MasterWorks: Journey Through History (2018)  is a new app for Oculus Rift and Gear VR that takes you on a guided tour through four cultural sites spanning three continents. Created using photogrammetry and presented with audio clips from experts, collectible artifacts and 3D 360 photos, the app does more than just let you explore the sites; it preserves these sites digitally while teaching you about the real-world threats they face amidst a rapidly changing climate.

Spanning over 3000 years of human history, you’ll be able to visit:

  • The historical city of Ayutthaya, Thailand, the second  capital of the Siamese Kingdom
  • Chavín de Huántar, a pre-Incan temple in the Peruvian Andes
  • Mesa Verde Native American cliff dwellings of Colorado
  • The stone carvings of Mt Rushmore in South Dakota

You can download  MasterWorks: Journey Through History  for Rift  here , and for Gear VR  here .

Norman Chan and Jeremy Williams of  Tested visited  CyArk , the studio behind  MasterWorks,  to talk a little about how they captured the sites.

Founded in 2003, the non-profit company’s mission, CyArk CEO John Ristevski told Tested,  is to capture, share and archive the world’s cultural heritage.

“We capture these places in accurate 3D, we archive it in case something happens to these sites – in case of destruction or damage – and we also makes this data available in interesting ways, such as in VR,” Ristevski explained.

The studio does this by using a laser-scanning Light Detection and Ranging device (LIDAR) and photo imagery using professional-level DSLRs and imagery captured via drones. Combining these two fundamental techniques, the company can make highly-accurate recreations of scenes like the ones seen below.

masterworks journey through history

As it stands now, the process of creating these experiences is still pretty arduous, requiring between 5-7 days of on-site time to capture an area about the size of a quarter-mile squared area (about 400m squared).

CyArk Director of Product Scott Lee tells Tested  their team uses motion-controlled camera rigs to capture the photos, which he says ensures the required 60-80 percent overlap is obtained to generate the photogrammetric models.

You can check out the full video interview  here .

Both of the links provided in the article are for the Gear VR. The software IS available for the Rift; just search for it. Ex: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1364510803659063/

Thanks for catching that, Jeffrey! I’ve fixed it now to direct to the appropriate store links.

Gℴogle giving the people 99 dollars per/hr to work onnet .. Work Some just few peroid of time daily and enjoy greater time together with your circle of relatives .. any individual can also catch this simple job!!this weekend I bought a top of the range Mitsubishi Evo after I been getting $7017 this-past/five weeks .without any doubt it is my favourite-job however you would not forgive yourself if you don’t read it.!gf961p:⇋⇋⇋ http://GoogleProjectRealOnlineJobs/more/cash … ♥o♥s♥d♥♥♥m♥l♥♥♥n♥♥♥l♥y♥♥♥p♥f♥♥d♥♥♥f♥♥h♥♥e♥x♥♥♥h♥♥n♥♥e♥♥n♥♥♥k♥o♥♥z♥d♥♥♥j♥♥y:::!yg913d:ttlur

— ” They’re master works all , you can’t go wrong “

Why they relevase for less than 50 % os Theft vr population? Releasing in Oculus is a waste of time… if you release in OpenVR works in Vive, Pimax 4K, Pimax 8K, OSVR… why release only for that demon company called Oculus.

Because open vr is limited, no reset view position. And most innovations in vr were implemented in ocusus years before open vr

Looks awesome! I love these apps where you can explore places and find out information about them, I think (and hope) a great future exists for this. Another one I can recommend is Realities (free on Steam).

It’s a shame though it’s not released on Vive, but here’s hoping they will in the near future ;)

Gℴℴgle is giving now 97 dollars per/hr to do easy tasks onnet … Work Some just few hours in a whole day and live happy more time together with your family .. You can do this golden chance!!on Wednesday I bought a great Car just after making $9265 this past six weeks .it is fantastic but you wo’nt forgive yourself if you do not read it.!bf202v:> http://GoogleRealEasyMoneyOnline/getcash/$97/everyhour … ♥c♥♥♥l♥♥q♥♥q♥u♥r♥♥♥x♥♥♥r♥u♥♥♥w♥♥♥k♥♥♥x♥♥q♥♥t♥♥♥e♥♥s♥y♥m♥♥♥s♥♥♥b♥l♥♥n♥p♥♥♥y♥o::!ff582h:tgsw

Wow, looks incredible!

Tech can be improved to mount LIDAR+cameras on drones let these fly around & capture the monuments and then automatic post-processing computer would create the final digital landscape for u to walk thru in VR —— I believe that a fully functional system should be able to cover one big monument in 1-2 days or better still, when used on light poles continuous monitoring LIDAR+cams can even create a realtime VR when every pixel also has x,y,z location —— So u want to visit Taj Mahal at night on full moon?

Why no Vive?!

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Masterworks: Journey Through History Provides A Transformative Educational VR Experience

Masterworks’ first VR experience will continue to inspire wonder and curiosity for years to come.

Masterworks

Education | Entertainment | Article

Masterworks: Journey Through History is an educational VR museum where users can explore four culturally significant sites in full roomscale aided by the power of photogrammetry.  Developed by FarBridge and published by CyArk , MasterWorks authentically transports users to places not easily accessible, and leverages actual archaeologists and historians to discuss the significance and meaning of these locations and their artifacts.

John Ristevski, CEO of CyArk , talks about Masterworks and how their first VR experience ensures that these places continue to inspire wonder and curiosity for years to come.

First off, tell us about MasterWorks and what users should expect when they try it out for the first time.

MasterWorks is a journey to 4 incredible locations created using fully navigable 3D environments created from photogrammetry rather than simply 360 video or hand modeled environments.  The result is an experience the user can move through in real time, exploring every portion of these amazing historic sites.  The result is an experience unlike anything else, creating a real sense of place.  This incredible visual experience is made more interactive through audio hotspots where you can learn from the people who care for these sites about their history and the challenges they face today.

masterworks journey through history

How did you come to pick the locations that you did, and what particular significance do they have?

The four locations in MasterWorks represent a diverse range of sites both geographically and temporally, spanning almost 3000 years of human history and 3 continents. Users can discover the fate of the ancient capital of Thailand, the mysteries of a pre-Incan temple in the Peruvian Andes, the astonishing Native American cliff dwellings of Colorado, and the monumental stone carvings of Mt Rushmore in South Dakota. These are also some of the most visually impressive sites in our archive with some especially interesting stories and I think users are going to have a great time exploring these places in VR.

masterworks journey through history

Processed with VSCO with a6 preset

Tell us about Cyark's greater mission, and how VR fits in that mission relative to other mediums.

CyArk is a non-profit located in Oakland, California and we capture, share and archive the world's cultural heritage. We have captured over 200 sites on all 7 continents. Our vision as an organization is to "ignite wonder, curiosity and a shared understanding of our past" and I see VR as a really important technology in helping us achieve that. When someone is truly immersed in these places it can convey that same sense of awe that you have when you visit it in person, and I think VR is unique in its capability to convey that.

masterworks journey through history

As MasterWorks is your first official VR title, what key challenges and learnings emerged from this experience?

We have a lot of experience in capturing these places accurately in 3D but capturing the narrative and story associated the physical site is a new experience for us. We spent many hours interviewing archaeologists, conservators and site managers to extract these stories and it was quite the task to distill this down into bite size chunks that were both interesting and still conveyed the complex and rich historical story of these sites.

Given the amazingly rich cultural context of Cyark's existing content, what other stories do you think need to be told?

We have many more sites in our archive and some with some fascinating and compelling stories. We just recently completed projects at Normandy in France, the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne and the team is currently documenting the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City. All of which are fascinating sites with rich histories.

Will there be additions to the Masterworks VR title?  What's next for Cyark and VR?

It is definitely a possibility. We have received some great feedback about the application already and I believe VR is the perfect medium for the presentation of the data we collect so we would love to grow the library of available sites in the future.

masterworks journey through history

MasterWorks: Journey Through History Screenshots and Videos - Kotaku

Masterworks: journey through history, all the latest game footage and images from masterworks: journey through history | 2018.

masterworks journey through history

MasterWorks: Journey Through History screenshot 2

masterworks journey through history

MasterWorks: Journey Through History screenshot 3

masterworks journey through history

MasterWorks: Journey Through History screenshot 4

masterworks journey through history

Masterworks - Journey through history

MasterWorks: Journey Through History

MasterWork puts users in 4 distinct places that highlight different cultures around the world. In these areas, users are also able to collect artifacts from these places and learn how recent climate change is affecting the locations.

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masterworks journey through history

MasterWorks: Journey Through History

masterworks journey through history

Description

Travel to three continents and visit some of the world’s most amazing places that span over 3000 years of human history. Discover the fate of the ancient capital of Thailand, the mysteries of a pre-Incan temple in the Peruvian Andes, the astonishing Native American cliff dwellings of Colorado, and the monumental stone carvings of Mt Rushmore in South Dakota. The MasterWorks Museum transports you to four fully explorable environments where you can collect artifacts and learn from archaeologists and scientists as you unravel the mysteries of who built these amazing places and learn about the challenges they face today in a rapidly changing climate.

What’s New

Welcome to MasterWorks! MasterWorks: Journey Through History now supports Tobii Eye-Tracking! If you are using a Tobii-enabled headset, simply look at any of the interactable artifacts, audio groups, or UI and pull the Vive trigger to select.

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Masterworks: Journey Through History Provides A Transformative Educational VR Experience

masterworks journey through history

5 minutes read

Masterworks: Journey Through History is an educational VR museum where users can explore four culturally significant sites in full roomscale aided by the power of photogrammetry.  Developed by FarBridge and published by CyArk , MasterWorks authentically transports users to places not easily accessible, and leverages actual archaeologists and historians to discuss the significance and meaning of these locations and their artifacts.

John Ristevski, CEO of CyArk , talks about Masterworks and how their first VR experience ensures that these places continue to inspire wonder and curiosity for years to come.

First off, tell us about MasterWorks and what users should expect when they try it out for the first time.

MasterWorks is a journey to 4 incredible locations created using fully navigable 3D environments created from photogrammetry rather than simply 360 video or hand modeled environments.  The result is an experience the user can move through in real time, exploring every portion of these amazing historic sites.  The result is an experience unlike anything else, creating a real sense of place.  This incredible visual experience is made more interactive through audio hotspots where you can learn from the people who care for these sites about their history and the challenges they face today. 

masterworks journey through history

How did you come to pick the locations that you did, and what particular significance do they have? 

The four locations in MasterWorks represent a diverse range of sites both geographically and temporally, spanning almost 3000 years of human history and 3 continents. Users can discover the fate of the ancient capital of Thailand, the mysteries of a pre-Incan temple in the Peruvian Andes, the astonishing Native American cliff dwellings of Colorado, and the monumental stone carvings of Mt Rushmore in South Dakota. These are also some of the most visually impressive sites in our archive with some especially interesting stories and I think users are going to have a great time exploring these places in VR.

masterworks journey through history

Processed with VSCO with a6 preset

Tell us about Cyark’s greater mission, and how VR fits in that mission relative to other mediums.

CyArk is a non-profit located in Oakland, California and we capture, share and archive the world’s cultural heritage. We have captured over 200 sites on all 7 continents. Our vision as an organization is to “ignite wonder, curiosity and a shared understanding of our past” and I see VR as a really important technology in helping us achieve that. When someone is truly immersed in these places it can convey that same sense of awe that you have when you visit it in person, and I think VR is unique in its capability to convey that.

masterworks journey through history

We have a lot of experience in capturing these places accurately in 3D but capturing the narrative and story associated the physical site is a new experience for us. We spent many hours interviewing archaeologists, conservators and site managers to extract these stories and it was quite the task to distill this down into bite size chunks that were both interesting and still conveyed the complex and rich historical story of these sites.

Given the amazingly rich cultural context of Cyark’s existing content, what other stories do you think need to be told?

We have many more sites in our archive and some with some fascinating and compelling stories. We just recently completed projects at Normandy in France, the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne and the team is currently documenting the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City. All of which are fascinating sites with rich histories.  

Will there be additions to the Masterworks VR title?  What’s next for Cyark and VR?

It is definitely a possibility. We have received some great feedback about the application already and I believe VR is the perfect medium for the presentation of the data we collect so we would love to grow the library of available sites in the future.

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masterworks journey through history

IMEX Lab

MasterWorks: Journey Through History

Description, what works well.

  • Architecture & Environmental Design
  • Humanities & Language

Level of Interactivity

masterworks journey through history

Wichita Symphony Orchestra - Music Director and Conductor Daniel Hege

Dust and Ions

masterworks journey through history

featuring Jeb Wallace, horn

Dust and Ions  was written by Wichita composer, Alex Wakim. Originally premiered at Wichita Center for the Arts in 2021, the cathartic journey of creation, purity, inevitable corruption, and a purge flows through the voice of the orchestra. How do we find beauty in a corrupted world?

Wichita Symphony Principal Horn, Jeb Wallace, explores the lyrical, expressive, and virtuosic qualities of the horn with Mozart's bright and infectiously cheerful Horn Concerto No. 4. Then, the orchestra takes center stage with Schoenberg's reimagination of Brahms's Piano Quartet in G minor. Fully-orchestrated, Brahms's intimate chamber work takes on new dimensions of color and expression, offering audiences a fresh perspective on a cherished classic with Schoenberg's orchestration.

ALEX WAKIM Dust and Ions: Orchestral Suite (World Premiere) W.A. MOZART Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-flat Major featuring Jeb Wallace, horn JOHANNES BRAHMS (ORCH. BY SCHOENBERG)  Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25

Sponsored by THE SAM AND RIE BLOOMFIELD FOUNDATION THE JAYNE AND GLENN MILBURN FUND AT THE WICHITA FOUNDATION SHOKO KATO SEVART AND THE LATE DANIEL J. SEVART

Arrive Early for Concert Talks

If you’d like to learn more about the music in our concert programs, Concert Talks are just what you need! Before every Masterworks Concert, the Wichita Symphony Orchestra will present pre-concert talks which help prepare you and deepen your understanding of the music to be performed in the program. Sometimes our guest soloists even join Maestro Hege for a discussion of their concerto collaboration! Free to all ticket holders, Concert Talks take place in the Concert Hall one hour prior to each Masterworks performance.

masterworks journey through history

New exhibit uses futuristic technology to give Cowboy museum visitors a feel for the past

masterworks journey through history

When Pat Fitzgerald toured the blockbuster traveling exhibition "Immersive Van Gogh" during its late 2022 Oklahoma City stop, he didn't just see large-scale depictions of the iconic artist's masterworks like "Irises," "Sunflowers" and "The Starry Night."

Among the eye-catching projections, he also saw a vision of the future for the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, the venerable OKC landmark where he had recently been appointed president and CEO.

"This is going to change the way we look at the West, the way we see the West, and it will change the way that we engage with the West. ... This is going to leave a legacy for our museum," Fitzgerald said at the recent grand opening celebration for the National Cowboy Museum's new immersive exhibition "Find Your West."

Now open in The Cowboy's West Hallway, the floor-to-ceiling, projection-mapped permanent exhibit "Find Your West" is the first museum project for Lighthouse Immersive, a Toronto-based company that creates, produces and distributes "Immersive Van Gogh" and other digital immersive art experiences, including "Immersive Disney Animation."

"When we launched 'Immersive Van Gogh' ... we did it in 21 cities across America. In every city we went to, the press would ask us, 'Well, what about the museums?'" said Lighthouse Immersive co-founder Corey Ross .

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

"I thought, 'Wow, so why don't we start working directly with the museums?' So, we started to do some outreach to see who would be interested, and it was a challenge. Museums move slowly: They don't want to be the first to do anything; they don't necessarily have the space. ... But what you're seeing today is just the first part of what we're planning to do here."

What will people see in the OKC museum's new 'Find Your West' immersive exhibit?

A giant replica of a compass points visitors into the "Find Your West" exhibit, which indeed takes them west from the main lobby into the museum's galleries.

"We made a thing that is the entrance to the museum; it's also the exit of the museum, which is a challenging thing. So, we talked a lot about, 'This is not the main event.' ... It's really like a trailer, like a movie trailer," said David Korins, Emmy-winning creative director and principal designer of New York City-based Korins Studio .

"You make a trailer, saying, 'Here's a character, this is a crazy thing that's going to happen to them, we're not going to tell you what happens. You have to go watch the movie.' Same thing here: You start your journey to the West, we ask a bunch of big-idea questions ... and then you go into the hundreds of thousands of square feet of extraordinary artifacts and stories."

With his studio, Korins, who also has worked on projects like "Immersive Van Gogh," the Tony-winning musical "Hamilton" and 2016 Fox musical "Grease: Live! ," collaborated with the Lighthouse Immersive team as well as The Cowboy's staff, which now includes the museum's own imagineer, Bob Miller, to create the set design for "Find Your West."

Boasting 27 projectors and 768 LED tiles made up of more than 23 million LED lights, the "Find Your West" exhibit boasts four vignettes: a covered wagon, a teepee, a set of barn doors and a rodeo chute.

Projections play over the entire 3,000-square-foot space, including these touchstones of real-life Western traditions. Images of a turtle and a bear dissolve into smoke that billows across the plains behind the teepee; a cowboy on a bucking bull bounds out of the chute, while another rodeo rider on a rowdy bronc makes his way back in; and the barn doors open onto a prairie dotted by longhorn cattle, bison and a distant windmill.

"We're really interested in telling the best version of the story that we have to tell, and in this instance, it felt like we never had a moment ever at the beginning in this where it was just going to be projections. It was always going to be more tactile ... with real built things," Korins told The Oklahoman.

"There was an added pressure to us, when you build things intentionally to scale in a museum, and they look like artifacts, but they are not, in fact, artifacts. There was a lot of trying to strike that balance of what feels really real and what feels successful scenographically."

Questions and facts about the origins of the cowboy's tools and skills, about the history of rodeo and about the diversity of Native American tribes fade in and out against the majestic scenery.

"There's really five things that had to work together in a very small space: The audio, which progresses as you move through; the lighting; the scenic, which they're incredible, these four scenic stations; but also the LED screens and projections. And we've never done all of that together. So, this was, fittingly, pioneering. So, this was a leap to try all those things together, and it's really working marvelously in this space," said Ross, while touring the exhibit during the grand opening.

The exhibit ends in a dazzling sunset before visitors pass into the museum's main galleries.

How does the new immersive exhibit fit in the museum's ongoing $40 million capital campaign?

Part of the museum's ongoing $40 million "Live the Code" capital campaign devised to improve and modernize the almost 60-year-old institution, the new state-of-the-art "Find Your West" exhibit was made possible through donations from the Harold Hamm Foundation, Continental Resources and Larry and Polly Nichols.

"One thing I like to do is travel, so I wind up going everywhere. And the first thing somebody'll ask is, 'Where are you from?' 'Well, I'm from Oklahoma City,' and I say it with a lot of pride. ... We do represent the West," said Hamm, the Oklahoma oilman who is founder and executive chairman of Continental Resources .

"I think of the technology that's embodied here, with this move into the new era ... and relating to the young people. We've got to tell these stories, and we've got to do it in a way that they get it."

Larry Nichols said it's exciting to see how the "Find Your West" creative team incorporated many of the museum's real artifacts, from iconic photographs to vivid paintings, into the projections that play across the exhibit walls.

"We have the best artifacts to tell the story of the West, but for a long time we've told the story in the same way we did 30, 40, 50 years ago. As we rejuvenate this museum, with exhibits like this, we'll tell the story in an engaging way so that it will attach to the hearts and souls and minds of young kids, of old people that come here," said Nichols, who is a member of the museum's board as well as the chairman of the capital campaign.

"This does a great job of introducing you to what this museum's about."

The Cowboy staffers plan to work again with Lighthouse Immersive to open an immersive theater experience in one of the museum's larger galleries in late 2025.

"Especially when we're doing the immersive shows in the gallery, once it's all mapped out and we get the grid system up, we can change the content very easily," Miller said.

"The hope is ... we'll run it for nine months, and then we'll have our 'Prix de West' art show . Then, the next nine months, it'll be a different story. That way, for the schoolkids and everybody coming back, they're seeing something different every year. And we're building those stories of the West."

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