The Weird Physical Universe Meow Wolf is Planning to Transform It Into Augmented Reality.

I’ve spent decades imagining how engaging physical and digital spaces may be. A new agreement is suddenly making my dream come true. Meow Wolf, the creator of interactive installations, and Niantic Spatial, the creator of Pokemon Go, will collaborate to develop and extend the Meow Wolf spaces into a mixed reality game. It will be installed on your phone, install and alter your physical encounter in interactive exhibits, and possibly even follow you home. &nbsp,

The relationship will begin this year with a closed beta evaluation of the world-mapped Mr layers in Meow Wolf’s Denver area, Convergence Station. Location-based engineering is also intended to burn on phones and appear on outside the real exhibit. It may even show up on coming Mr glasses, starting with plans for 2026.

The Meow Wolf universe is believed to be physically and online expanding across the entire world, according to Vince Kadlubek, co-founder and deputy vision officer. John Lee, the team’s leader at Meow Wolf, and John Lee, the CTO of Niantic Spatial, were in our special chat.

I’m imagining some sort of ridiculous Pokemon Go-like set of interdimensional adventures that start in the displays and continue when you’re house, and that’s not far off from what’s being planned. The partnership may increase Meow Wolf’s sensory-overload experiences while also revealing potential future directions for engaging physical spaces and theme parks.

Actual spaces are covered in layers of virtual reality.

Meow Wolf, a Santa Fe-based social, has now created five distinct interactive interactive deployments around the US and has programs for two more in the next several years. It’s a business I just fell in love with because it’s already been specializing in the physical-digital, real-virtual mixture. While hundreds of artists create their true exhibits using mostly physical materials, they all feel like they are entering interdimensional portals.

Meow Wolf has had the purpose of expanding into online and augmented reality for decades. In 2023, the organization experimented with Mr in its apps and created a digital version of its Denver display inside a VR minigolf game. The people from Niantic and Meow Wolf told me that the latest move is unique. Using sensory placing resources Niantic Spatial started developing in games like Pokemon Go, it’s really trying to level the real-world exhibits with Mr that will be mapped onto the actual spaces. Additionally, it will interact with tangible objects in the displays. &nbsp,

We’ve been working a lot on what we call electrical connection, so that things you do in the game can change the way that great takeovers or local status changes affect the actual physical show, and vice versa,” Meow Wolf CTO Lee said.

When I spoke to Meow Wolf earlier this year, I learned that the organized New York setup will observe mingled truth in all new way. This looks like a big part of those plans. &nbsp,

Because of these indoor environments, we are able to create a show system infrastructure that is quite sophisticated, Kadlubek said.

A field test to determine whether real and artificial are interconnected.

The closed beta test later this year will change the way entering and moving through Meow Wolf’s Denver location will feel. It will begin with an AR mission outside that involves an outdoor portal, which will then lead to quests inside of Meow Wolf space.

What you did outside of the exhibition has a bearing on what you are doing inside the exhibition, and the quest continues as you look for and solve new puzzles, Kadlubek said. You are then given the physical satisfaction of the exhibition responding to your accomplishments with light and sound projection created specifically for you. After you leave the exhibition more AR points on a map show up. The proof of concept doesn’t end there; however, once you understand how crucial that piece is to expanding to other cities and eventually expanding internationally, you can start to understand how significant that piece is.

A public version of the overlaid AR experience could be available at Meow Wolf’s Denver or upcoming LA locations, according to Kadlubek.

Balancing virtual distractions with real experiences

The blending of the virtual and the physical is a challenging area that AR companies have promised for years. Companies like Snap and Niantic Spatial have created tools and apps that incorporate AR into physical landmarks and scanned images of real-world mapped areas. Niantic Spatial used to have a number of AR-enabled games, but sold off most of its gaming properties to Scopely and is now focused on spatial technologies with real-world mapping. &nbsp,

Recent developments like Peridot, an implausible augmented reality pet that appears to be circling your home, demonstrate how some of the technology might function. The Meow Wolf partnership sounds almost like Pokemon Go, but it’ll work both at exhibits and away from them. The ideal mix, according to Kadlubek, should be about 20 % AR at physical locations and 80 % AR at real locations, and 80 % AR when using the app elsewhere. &nbsp,

” It’s been a long time coming to get the technology to a place where the experience is realistic enough and feels precise enough. And you know, our main focus is on bringing immersive digital content to the canvas of the 3D world through the use of bits and atoms, according to Thomas Gewecke, president and COO of Niantic Spatial. We believe this kind of capability is necessary.

Kadlubek and Lee acknowledge that they don’t want these new AR experiences to overwhelm or distract from the physical installations themselves, which are already a celebration of sensory overload. However, the additions of AR and mapping to Meow Wolf’s app might allow for deeper levels of substory and quests. &nbsp,

Where will the real and virtual overlaps blend and bleed, both here and everywhere else?

Already layers of games and secrets are present in Meow Wolf’s exhibits, which are triggered by in-world interactive devices like phones or by tapping NFC-triggered cards onto terminals. Universal’s Super Nintendo World and Wizarding World have quests and challenges that get triggered by bands and wands that tap or wave in certain places at the right time.

Not everyone who visits a theme park or an art exhibit wants to start pulling these extra pieces out of their pockets, but all of these need to lean on more advanced phone apps. With Disney and Universal, phone apps have become overloaded. More enigmatic and overlapping with the physical locations, Meow Wolf’s evolving phone app, which I tried in the Santa Fe and Denver exhibits this spring. The app can look for Bluetooth beacons in the rooms you walk through by turning on a “psychic sensor.” After your visit, you can open it up and see secrets you’ve unlocked: artifacts you may have missed, videos, bits of lore.

Kadlubek and Lee of Meow Wolf claim that the Niantic Spatial tech infusions will continue to evolve the app’s creative overlaps and add an ARG-like series of game quests that will keep you interested. They might even be used to promote pop-up experiences, other partner art exhibits, or to organize or organize performance events. The ideas remind me of the potential I saw when Niantic first announced its Lightship world-mapped developer platform years ago, and a collaboration with immersive theater company Punchdrunk that was canceled before anything was created. Promises of these kinds of overlaps and connections have been seen and gone. Are they actually beginning to occur?

This time, however, the overlays could be coming in all sorts of ways. According to Lee, Meow Wolf’s exhibits will be constructed in the future to support this tech integration. With the exception of the original, less tech-infused House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, existing exhibits are being retro-fitted and enhanced.

I already got lost in Meow Wolf’s mazes of dripping art, losing myself in other worlds. The collective’s strange goods are on my shelves, like illogical remnants of my journey. However, I might end up living in Meow Wolf’s world forever in the future. Is that where all our theme parks are heading, too?