Iceberg
When visitors enter the experience, they find themselves in a dark room. When they look around, they discover a massive iceberg not far away that rises more than 20 meters into the air.
Using a simple and intuitive control system, they can approach the iceberg in a slow gliding flight.
The iceberg is initially static and unchanging. After about a minute, however, it begins to change. Slowly, it transforms from a photorealistic 3D image into a wireframe, a more abstract image that represents the data layer that underlies the full 3D image.
From there, it further resolves into what’s called a point cloud: an even more abstract visualization of data points that form the base layer on which the image was scanned. Eventually, these data points go out like stars, leaving only darkness.
As the visual recedes, so does the sound. Gently but steadily, the sound waves become simpler, more artificial, and more rudimentary, until they finally disappear into silence.
The iceberg is the central shape in our VR Experience. With its mighty size and history and habitat for musk oxen and walruses, for example, we want to bring the viewer into awareness of the immensity of this natural phenomenon.
Sunflower
Seastar
When visitors enter the seastar’s space, it begins to move gently, and as one hovers on the underside, the feet begin to dance and sway and the arms contract as if the seastar were a prey animal.
Once common on the west coast of the U.S., the Sunflower starfish is almost completely extinct as a result of a disease whose origin is unknown. This starfish is another monstrous predator. It has more than 20 legs and a bulging, orange body. On its underside are thousands of tiny tube feet, delicate transparent instruments that it uses to grab its prey and penetrate its insides before expelling its own stomach and digesting them alive.
Barbie
Pagoda
Fungus
When visitors get to the giant, trumpet-shaped mushroom, the fruiting bodies slowly begin to unfold in a sped-up version of their normal growth, eventually releasing spores into the air in a cloud.
A rare mushroom found only on the South Pacific island of New Caledonia is named the Barbie Pagoda because of its exceptionally bright, cotton candy pink fruiting bodies. It grows exclusively on the underside of the oak gum tree in a few areas threatened by fire, forest clearing, and human-introduced pigs, wild cattle, and horses. The population of the fungus has dwindled to only 80 to 240 adult specimens.
Aquilegia
Nuragica
The movement of the observer triggers the movement of the flower in the wind on its local hillside: While the roots remain motionless, the stems sway and flutter back and forth.
Compared to the strangeness of some other forms, the columbine’s appearance is rather ordinary: a small wildflower with small, purple petals - but with a root system that extends beneath it almost as far as the stems above. The columbine’s habitat is only 50 square meters and consists of steep limestone cliffs overlooking the Flumineddu River in eastern Sardinia. A recent study showed that the entire world population consists of only 40 adult plants.
Lion's Hill
Velvet Worm
When visitors activate this giant monster, it begins to move its many legs in the air and turns its face and body toward you as you explore it.
It is named for the only place it occurs, a strikingly bare, flat hill overlooking Cape Town, South Africa. Velvet worms have short, round legs stretched out like a teddy bear’s and cartoon-like faces with blind, protruding eyes. The Lion’s Hill velvet worm is distinguished by its purple-pink color. Although they look cute, they are very effective predators that can prey on insects their own size.