Belvedere Museum Uses Niantic VPS to Bring Art to Life with AR

The Belvedere Museum in Vienna, home to masterpieces like Klimt’s The Kiss, is no stranger to innovation. But with The Fantastic Palastics: Mission Museum, it’s pushing the boundaries of visitor engagement using augmented reality—anchored not just to the museum space, but to specific physical features inside it.

Powered by Niantic’s Visual Positioning System (VPS) built with 8th Wall, and developed in collaboration with The Brand Father and Orb Amsterdam, the museum launched an immersive AR experience that transforms a traditional tour into an interactive story, guided by whimsical animal characters and personalized creative challenges.

The museum wanted to:

• Engage millions of visitors through interactive storytelling

• Seamlessly blend digital content into the real-world museum environment

• Avoid app downloads to reduce friction for families and tourists

• Precisely trigger AR events at exact indoor locations

Conventional location-based AR—often dependent on GPS or beacons—couldn’t provide the spatial accuracy needed for the indoor setting or the creative freedom the museum envisioned.

Niantic VPS provided the breakthrough.

Using a 3D scan of the Marble Hall, Niantic’s VPS enabled real-time localization with centimeter-level precision. Visitors, using their mobile browsers, are guided through the space and—when standing in the exact spot—trigger a virtual ostrich to descend from the room’s real-world chimney. This magical moment hinges entirely on VPS's spatial fidelity.

The broader experience was built with 8th Wall, including the following features:

• Image Tracking to animate visitor drawings

• World Tracking to place 3D flowers on the ceiling

• Face Effects to personalize digital portraits

All of this was delivered 100% in-browser, accessible instantly by scanning a QR code—no app required.

• Frictionless Access: By eliminating app downloads, the experience scaled effortlessly to tourists and casual visitors.

• Pinpoint Accuracy: Niantic VPS enabled immersive content that felt native to the environment—bridging physical and digital storytelling.

• Creative Customization: Visitors could draw, scan, and see their creations become part of a growing collective AR garden inside the museum.

The success builds on the museum’s earlier outdoor AR activation—but this time, VPS and 8th Wall brought that precision indoors at scale.

The Belvedere Museum case shows how spatial computing can enhance education, storytelling, and cultural engagement. By leveraging Niantic VPS and deploying through 8th Wall, the museum created a deeply contextual AR journey—one that’s scalable, accessible, and unforgettable.

If you're a museum, cultural venue, or brand looking to turn places into immersive, interactive worlds—Niantic Spatial offers the tools to make it happen.