Should you wish to sit next to Empress Elisabeth, fly above Vienna, or see what AI can do with Mozart, then I have a few suggestions for you…
- See also:
Virtual reality and more
(Fly in a boat above Vienna)
Indoor VR experiences
Three indoor attractions in particular place the emphasis on virtual reality and immersion.
- Sisi’s Amazing Journey: a two-part attraction with a documentary film about the life of Empress Elisabeth followed by a virtual reality ride on a boat.
The VR part is simply a bundle of fun; you also sit in an actual (small) boat, which moves to add another dimension to the adventure. The monarch herself serves as your fellow passenger and guide.
- Time Travel tour: a sister attraction to the above and much more extensive. A bubbly mix of VR, 5D cinema, moving sets, animatronics and more with a little bit of history thrown in to give it a veneer of education.
This takes you through notable events or Vienna-related themes, but the focus is on the entertainment part of infotainment.
- Schloss Schönbrunn VR experience: a 24-minute cinematic and VR experience in one of the rooms of Schönbrunn palace.
The presentation guides you across the last couple of centuries of Habsburg personalities, with Empress Elisabeth playing a big part (yep, she’s popular!)
(Tip: all three of these VR attractions are included in a Go City All-Inclusive or Explorer Pass for Vienna.)
VR tours
(Bus and VR tour in one)
These tours combine a real trip around Vienna sights with VR elements at particular stops.
- Future Bus: I enjoyed this one. A small tour bus takes you around some of the more prominent central locations.
At selected stops, you don your headset to find yourself whisked up into the air or transported back to historical scenes created through both animation technology and reenactments with real actors.
- VR Tours Vienna: a roughly two-hour walking tour I hope to get to soon (I’ve seen them out and about).
You walk through the city centre, stopping at various key locations to put on a headset and view important historical events unfolding around you at the same spot via VR animations. Includes both a live guide and a multilingual audioguide.
Multimedia & immersive
(A paradise for button pressers)
Various attractions and temporary exhibitions now involve clever use of multimedia, VR elements, AI, and/or other technologies to create immersive experiences.
- Mythos Mozart: a recent addition to the Vienna landscape with five large rooms featuring unique audiovisual environments.
Art meets music meets technology meets AI in dynamic wall and floor projections, an interactive performance of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and more.
- The House of Music: has various interactive stations. You can create your own Clong sound creature using a VR headset, for example, or conduct an orchestra that responds to your baton movements.
I should add that members of that orchestra make dismissive comments should your efforts as a conductor fail to live up to their expectations. The cheek of it.
Until June 30th, 2023, the museum also hosts the BEETHOVEN // OPUS 360 interactive virtual reality experience. Beethoven takes on a modern-day rapper and you can intervene in proceedings.
- The Technisches Museum: the Vienna Museum of Science and Technology has an awful lot of buttons to press and levers to pull (to put it in old-fashioned terms).
Again, numerous interactive stations…from wheelchair simulators to cable car rides.
Special exhibitions
Vienna has become a stop for some of the immersive and/or interactive exhibitions that now tour the world. Current examples include:
- The Monet exhibition*: Haven’t managed this, either, but it promises an immersive journey through the story and art of the pioneering French impressionist via music and projections.
P.S. A fair few places offer what we might call a virtual tour of Vienna or of specific locations within the city without the need to leave your home. Here some suggestions.