Georgia Tech Industrial Design students built a VR animal-vision exhibit for the Children’s Museum of Atlanta using Meta Quest 2, arcade buttons, and ESP32.
Key Takeaways
Exhibit simulates how animals see using Meta Quest 2 with video filters; black-and-white passthrough made live camera mode impractical, so it was cut.
Input evolved from a masked Bluetooth keyboard to arcade buttons via ESP32, improving tactile navigation without looking down.
Every reachable surface became an interface – kids leaned on, grabbed, and clicked everything including a stray VR controller left nearby.
A double-press easter egg for scene-switching was discovered by about half the kids; the other half still had a complete experience, a natural progressive disclosure pattern.
Designed as a solo viewer, the exhibit consistently generated social behavior: kids pulling parents and friends over to share the view.
