At Vienna’s Belvedere museum, history isn’t something you just look at, it’s something you explore, solve, draw, and bring to life. With The Fantastic Palastics: Mission Museum, the Belvedere is inviting kids and families into a story-driven, tech-powered adventure where imagination meets innovation thanks to the power of augmented reality.

This new indoor experience is the second chapter in the Fantastic Palastics AR series and is available now to its 1.9 million visitors the Belvedere Museum sees annually. Visitors are guided through the museum by six virtual animal companions including Roco the Lion, Neo the Lemur, and Dada the Ostrich, each with their own personality and mission. Along the way, children collect hidden numbers, complete creative challenges, and discover iconic artworks like Klimt’s The Kiss and Messerschmidt’s Character Heads.

What sets this apart is how the museum integrates web-based augmented reality to bring the experience to life. Built on 8th Wall’s AR platform and developed in collaboration with The Brand Father and Orb Amsterdam, the experience uses a variety of AR technologies to bring the characters into the space, and invite visitors into the story:

• Image Tracking: Visitors can color an image of the Sphinx. Once scanned, their version of the Sphinx comes to life animated and in 3D in the space in front of them.
  
  
• Image + World Tracking: In another station, children color a flower. Scanning their creation brings it to life in 3D, and they can then anchor it to the ceiling to join a growing garden of other visitor’s creations.
  
  
• VPS (Visual Positioning System): Using Niantic Spatial’s VPS, a feature of the 8th Wall platform, the game precisely locates visitors within the museum’s Marble Hall to trigger a virtual ostrich to descend from the real-life chimney, blending the digital and the physical to create a whimsical experience.
  
  
• Face Tracking: At the final secret stop, visitors are invited to become the artists themselves. Using a face filter, they decorate their own digital portrait with playful stickers and snap a creative selfie they can share with family and friends.

Mission Museum builds on the success of the Belvedere’s first AR experience, The Garden Game, launched in 2023. This outdoor version lets visitors explore the palace gardens while interacting with virtual animals, solving puzzles, and learning about the Belvedere’s 300-year history. With this new indoor experience, the museum takes things even further, using AR to activate the space, spark creativity, and personalize each visitor’s journey inside the museum.

The AR experience is available now for visitors of the museum. Game maps and pens are provided at the museum, and the experience is available in both English and German.