Atlanta has had its fair share of immersion-type experiences in recent years focused on “Stranger Things,” “Jurassic World,” “Friends” and “Downton Abbey” as well as artists Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso.
A few have included virtual reality as part of the equation such as the current Balloon Museum at Pullman Yards in Kirkwood and the Van Gogh Experience at the Exhibition Hub in Doraville.
But those experiences are fairly static in the sense that you sit there, wear goggles and watch a show.
A French company Eclipso has created the first virtual reality experience in Atlanta that enables attendees to roam a large open space donning VR headsets while touring the pyramids in Egypt, both present day and thousands of years in the past. They have rented out the Illuminarium building off the Beltline for a year, temporarily redubbing the space the Eclipso Centre.
In the past, I have personally tried out virtual reality experiences that have lasted a few minutes at a time. I have yet to use the Apple Vision Pro. This is the first time I spent this much time with goggles on inside another world. And it’s well worth the price of admission.
A VR guide Zander Krenger walked me through the experience. At a terminal near the entrance, I signed myself up as an avatar. If I had up to three other people with me, we would create avatars together so we could see each other through our VR goggles and recognize each other.
He then placed the special VR goggle around my head. It felt comfortable. I was immediately able to see a virtual version of my hands, though not my feet while I’m walking. (Krenger said the goggles are light enough for ages 8 and up.)
Mona, our virtual reality guide, opens the experience, a pleasant gabby sort dressed in khakis who admits this is her first time doing this, a harbinger of things to come. She starts a virtual nighttime tour of the Pyramid of Khufu, also known as The Great Pyramid of Giza. We slowly float up to an elevated entrance. The 3D visuals provide the sensation of movement even while I’m standing still.
While this is a “free roaming” VR experience, you can only walk in a limited area at one time. The VR goggle provides a shifting box with a blue border in which you can wander. Step beyond the border and the screen goes black, which will discourage most folks from going fully rogue. The technology also recognizes real walls and pillars with criss-crossed red lines so you don’t easily bump into them.
But within those borders, you can walk around, peer into nooks and crannies and act as if you are in the actual pyramid. The reality is you are a specter in the sense nobody in the scenario reacts to what you do. You could literally walk through the tour guide or stand uncomfortably close to her without her reacting.
While you can see generic shadowy figures representing other people on the tour, Krenger, the guide, said people might run into each other on occasion. It’s his job to minimize that from happening. “We’re like the ghosts in the scenario,” he said. “You can’t see us but we see you.”
In the early going, a cat calmly follows us. Once we enter a room containing Khufu’s tomb, the electricity goes out and the guide leaves to find help. All goes dark and the cat transforms into a regal Egyptian goddess named Bastet who talks, opens a portal in the wall and guides us through the interior of the pyramid.
Credit: ECLI
Credit: ECLI
Bastet then takes us outside of the pyramid. In what is possibly the highlight of the tour, we travel up the side of the pyramid rising to the top, 481 feet high, so we can bask in the view while birds fly overhead. We then go back in time and see what the area looked like 4,500 years earlier. At one point, we become King Kong super-sized, enabling us to more easily traverse the immediate neighborhoods around the pyramids. And no, we are not crushing anything. As previously noted, nothing we do has any impact on the visuals.
We then enter a barge that enables us to travel an ancient river and see how Khufu was buried. We then partake in a ceremony with many of his followers mourning his death.
Credit: ECLI
Credit: ECLI
The quality of the visuals are not quite 4D but fairly sharp. The guide, cat and others we see possess ghostly eyes and fall just shy of looking real.
But in all, it’s educational and truly immersive. I didn’t get dizzy. I didn’t ever feel like I was losing my bearings. I was able to step off the pyramid, effectively floating in air, knowing it wasn’t real. And Krenger, the human guide, was always there to answer my questions.
Taking the goggles off when it ended and realizing I was standing in a large room with odd black and white symbols painted on the walls was mildly disorienting. The markings allow the headset to know what is happening.
Credit: RODNEY HO/rh
Credit: RODNEY HO/rh
“We can do more than one show in here at a time and set people on different pathways so they do not collide,” said Jen Berghs, Eclipso Centre’s general manager.
This experience is also in three cities in France (Lyon, Paris, Bordeaux) and London and will soon be opening in New York City. Eclipso said more than 400,000 people have seen “Horizon of Khufu” so far over the past two years.
Catherine Ceys — executive director of Emissive, the virtual reality studio that created the experience Eclipso is distributing — said they were able to create the experience after taking a trip to Egypt with Harvard University Egyptologist and advisor Peter Manuelian.
Eclipso plans to add other experiences to the mix. Ceys said they have shows focused around Impressionist painters as well as dinosaurs.
IF YOU GO
“Horizon of Khufu”
Noon-8 p.m Tuesday-Friday; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday. $24-$28. Eclipso Centre, 550 Somerset Terrace NE, Atlanta. feverup.com.
About the Author
