Choosing the Ideal AR & VR Platform for Your Brand Activation or Museum Experience: Our Take.

Let’s face it; these days experiences are king, and you’re no doubt facing increasing pressure to create interactive, kick-ass activations that go way beyond the norm. Experiences that give audiences the immersion, engagement, excitement, and hands on discovery that they’re craving like a hungry dog at an all-you-can-eat bone buffet.

When it comes to creating unforgettable immersive experiences, there are plenty of options. Augmented reality (AR) overlays digital objects onto the real world, letting users interact with their surroundings, artifacts, and products in new ways. Virtual reality (VR), on the other hand, transports users to entirely new, immersive spaces. Mixed reality blends both of these, offering the best of both worlds by combining elements of the real and digital. The type of reality you choose to create depends on the experience you want to deliver, the devices available to you (or those you’re lacking), and the space you have to work with.

However, which platform is right for your museum experience or brand activation? Do you opt for a web-based AR solution, or do you use a custom app? And which VR platform do you select? With the Apple Vision Pro, Meta’s Quest, HTC Vive, Ray-Ban Smart Glasses, Magic Leap, Snapchat Spectacles, and more now available, selecting the right hardware and platform could make or break your mixed-reality masterpiece, and end up turning your Brand Ambassadors and Museum Docents into Brand Adversaries and Museum Deterrents.

So, let’s slice and dice the pros and cons of what you have in your VR and AR arsenal.

Immersive Exploration with Virtual Reality.

VR offers truly immersive experiences, inviting your audience to step inside a completely new environment. This could be anything from teleporting around the globe to traveling in time or adventures in worlds of your own inventions. There are many options open to you here, but let’s take a look at the three big players.

Meta Quest VR headsets (formerly Oculus) are now completely wireless and offer full freedom of movement, making them ideal for any kind of brand/museum activation that requires users to physically explore a space. Think virtual walkthroughs, tours of ancient civilizations, or taking fans of fiction (Harry Potter, Star Trek, Star Wars) to the sets and locations of their favorite shows and movies. They can be singular experiences, letting visitors explore at their own space, or shared experiences that inspire social connections, family time, and camaraderie.

The trade-off, of course, is logistics. In short, VR experiences require the brand activation or museum has headsets on hand and the team to manage the hardware and user onboarding. You will need to set up charging stations, swap out devices as needed, and ensure they stay clean for each user. But it's also important to consider your space when designing the experience. Do you have enough room for people to walk around without bumping into each other, or should the experience be seated or stationary? And don’t forget about accessibility. You need to ensure the experience is welcoming for those visitors that have limited mobility.

The Meta Quest is great for quickly resetting an experience between visitors and powerful enough to bring any of your ideas to life.

Then there’s Apple Vision Pro, which bridges AR and VR in a way that enhances, rather than disrupts, a user’s physical environment. Apple’s Vision Pro can blend high-definition graphics with seamless interactions that create an elite mixed-reality canvas.

How does it work? Well, imagine a museum exhibit where a visitor can simultaneously view an ancient artifact whilst a holographic guide explains its history. Or, a luxury product showcase where the digital overlay elevates, rather than replaces, the physical object. The resolution of the graphics and ability to track the real world is unmatched. Plus, they look elegant and some audiences may just want to engage with your experience for a chance to test out the high end headset.

However, there are definitely some downsides to the Apple Vision Pro, and if you’re considering it for a live brand activation or public exhibit, you may want to rethink it. While it's a sleek device with excellent eye-tracking and gesture control, it’s built for personal use, not for sharing. The device requires a personalized setup, including mapping your eyes and hands, and this makes it very time consuming to pass between multiple users. The onboarding takes time, slowing throughput and guest turnover, and extra staff may be needed to assist guests, all of which negatively impacts the user experience.

The headset would work well for private showcases and intimate experiences, but if you require large scale visitor throughput, the Vision Pro isn’t for you. If you're looking to create immersive, shared public experiences, you should look to the Meta Quest Pro mentioned above (or the VIVE XR Elite).

Accessibility vs. Immersion: The Case for WebAR.

For most brand activations and museum exhibitions, ease of use is without a doubt the biggest factor at play here. Just put yourself in the position of your audience. You don't want to promote an all-singing, all-dancing escape into the extraordinary, only to have your visitors completely lose interest because they’re wrestling with a new piece of tech or faced with downloading yet another app.

Enter 8th Wall, the leading name in WebAR, and a partner that NeoPangea has had nothing but great success with. With 8th Wall, the barrier to entry is completely eliminated. Everything the user needs to access the experience is already in the pocket or purse; namely, a smartphone with web access.

With 8th Wall and WebAR, a simple QR code scan (boy, those codes have made quite a comeback) unlocks the whole experience. No downloads. No friction. Just a seamless, enjoyable interactive journey for the most casual of users. And that makes it ideal for high-foot-traffic locations like museums, festivals, and pop-up shops.

Bringing Your Experience to the Masses with Snap AR.

Want to create an AR activation that begs to be shared? If your audience is highly social and you’re looking to generate shareable, viral content, Snap AR (yes, from Snapchat) is well worth looking into.

With Snap AR’s superb Lens Studio, brands and museums can create custom AR experiences that work right within Snapchat, reaching millions of users on a platform where social sharing is second nature. As a Snapchat Partner, we find that this is a great fit for campaigns targeting younger audiences who are already familiar with AR filters and effects. And remember, people can not only experience this on their own smartphones, but also on Snap Spectacles. While still relatively new to the AR scene, Spectacles allow users to interact with digital content overlaid on the real world, and include built-in cameras, microphones, and speakers.

Whether it’s a gamified treasure hunt in a museum, or a fun brand activation at an outdoor event, Snap AR creates instantly shareable experiences that can really boost your engagement like a SpaceX rocket to Mars.

Your 3-Point Checklist For Magical Mixed Reality.

To sum up, when you’re deciding between platforms, keep the following simple checklist top of mind:

1. Accessibility: When you want maximum reach and minimal barriers to entry, check our web-based solutions like 8th Wall or shareable platforms like Snap AR. These options allow you to capture attention quickly and make an immediate impact without the need for any downloads or specialized equipment. Quick. Simple. Effective. Affordable. Boom.
2. Immersion: If you’re looking to create an experience where visitors lose themselves in another world, there’s nothing to match a full VR application that MetaQuest provides. On the other hand, if you want visitors to remain connected to their physical surroundings while enhancing them with digital content, Apple Vision Pro will deliver here - if you have the time and staff to personally onboard the visitors.
3. Scale: When we talk about scale, we’re also talking budget as well as the physical size of the installation. And like everything in life, you pay to play. The high-end mixed reality solutions (Apple Vision Pro, HoloLens), come with a larger price tag than Web-AR and will require a larger investment in both hardware and development. With that in mind, save these for flagship installations and activations with serious budgets and a clear need for high fidelity or premium experiences that are ticketed.

And remember, if you need to talk about any kind of AR or VR project, hit us up. We’ve been pioneers in this field since our first AR project with Walmart in 2009, and our augmented reality agency knows just how to squeeze every drop of juice from an experience.