Meow Wolf's Weird Physical Universe Is Planning to Extend Into Augmented Reality
I've spent years exploring immersive physical and digital spaces and dreaming of how they can overlap. A new partnership is finally making my dream come true. Immersive installation creator Meow Wolf and Pokemon Go creator Niantic Spatial will join forces to expand and extend existing Meow Wolf spaces into a mixed reality game. It will live on your phone, activate and change your physical experience in immersive exhibits, and could even follow you home.
The partnership is starting this year with a closed beta test of the world-mapped AR overlays in Meow Wolf's Denver space, Convergence Station. The location-based technology is also designed to bleed outside the physical exhibit and appear on phones. It may even show up on future AR glasses, starting with plans for 2026.
"The belief here is that the Meow Wolf universe really could extend both physically and digitally across the entire globe," Vince Kadlubek, Meow Wolf co-founder and chief vision officer told me. Our exclusive conversation included Meow Wolf CTO John Lee and the heads of Niantic Spatial's team.
I'm imagining some sort of bizarre Pokemon Go-like series of interdimensional quests that start in the exhibits and continue when you're home, and that's not far off from what's being planned. The partnership could make Meow Wolf's sensory-overload experiences feel even more fascinating, but it also indicates where other immersive physical spaces and theme parks could be heading soon.
Meow Wolf dabbled in VR a few years ago, recreating one of its Denver installations in Walkabout Mini Golf. The new partnership with Ninatic aims to directly layer virtual elements into physical exhibits via your phone.
Mighty Coconut
Physical spaces get augmented reality layers
Meow Wolf, a Santa Fe-based collective, has already created five different immersive interactive installations around the US and has plans for two more in the next several years. It's a company I became recently obsessed with because it's already been heavily dabbling in the physical-digital, real-virtual blend. All their experiences are created to feel like they're tapping into interdimensional portals, while their actual exhibits are made out of largely physical materials by hundreds of artists.
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Extending into virtual and augmented reality is a goal Meow Wolf has had for years. The company made a virtual version of its Denver exhibit inside a VR mini golf game in 2023, and played around with AR in its apps back in 2019. The folks from Niantic and Meow Wolf told me that the current move is different. It's actually aiming to layer the real-world exhibits with AR that'll be mapped onto the physical spaces, using visual positioning tools Niantic Spatial started building in games like Pokemon Go. And it's going to work with physical things in the exhibits.
"We've been doing a lot of work with what we call mechanical connectivity, so that things that you do in the app can affect the actual physical exhibition via local state changes or big takeovers, and vice versa," Meow Wolf CTO Lee said.
When I spoke to Meow Wolf earlier this year, I learned that that the planned New York installation will explore mixed reality in all new ways. This looks like a big part of those plans.
"We are in a unique position -- because we have these indoor environments, we are able to build this show system infrastructure that is quite sophisticated," said Kadlubek.
Peridot, a mixed-reality pet made by Niantic Spatial, shows some hints of where Meow Wolf's collaboration could be heading.
Screenshot by Scott Stein/CNET
A field test for the overlap of real and AR
The closed beta test later this year will change the way entering and moving through Meow Wolf's Denver location will feel. It'll start with an AR mission outside involving an outdoor portal, leading to quests inside the Meow Wolf space.
Maps with portal locations could start appearing in Meow Wolf's app with AR quests.
Meow Wolf and Niantic Spatial
"What you did outside of the exhibition matters now to what you're doing inside of the exhibition, and the quest continues as you find additional clues and solve additional puzzles inside the exhibition, " explained Kadlubek. "You then have a reward of the exhibition itself physically responding to you completing that quest, being able to recognize who you are and what you've done, and responding with light and sound projection specifically for you. After you leave the exhibition more AR points on a map show up. The proof of concept stops there, but you can start to understand how important that piece is to scaling to other cities, and then eventually scaling globally."
After the beta, a public version of the overlaid AR experience could arrive at either Meow Wolf's Denver or upcoming LA locations, according to Kadlubek.
Balancing virtual distractions with real experiences
The blending of the virtual and the physical is a difficult territory, one promised by AR companies for years. Companies like Niantic Spatial and Snap have built tools and apps that add AR onto physical landmarks or scans of real-world mapped areas. Niantic Spatial used to have a number of AR-enabled games, but sold off most of its gaming properties to Scopely and is now focused on spatial technologies with real-world mapping.
Recent projects like Peridot, a whimsical augmented reality pet that looks like it's running around your home, show off how some of the technology could work. The Meow Wolf partnership sounds almost like Pokemon Go, but it'll work both at exhibits and away from them. Kadlubek suggests that the ideal mix is about 20% AR at physical locations and 80% real, and 80% AR when using the app anywhere else.
"It's been a long time coming to get the technology to a place where the experience is realistic enough and feels precise enough. And you know, our huge focus is on this idea of connecting bits to atoms, really bringing immersive digital content onto the canvas of the 3D world," said Thomas Gewecke, Niantic Spatial's president and COO. "We think the time has come for this sort of capability."
Kadlubek and Lee acknowledge that they don't want these new AR experiences to overwhelm or distract from the physical installations themselves, which are already a celebration of sensory overload. But the AR and mapping additions to Meow Wolf's app could help add quests and deeper layers of substory.
Tapping into one of Meow Wolf's terminals at its Las Vegas exhibit. Little RFID cards serve as souvenirs and a sort of interactive game layer. Future layers of augmented-reality interaction with the physical space could do even more.
Scott Stein/CNET
Where will the real and virtual overlaps blend and bleed here and everywhere else?
Meow Wolf's exhibits already have layers of games and secrets, triggered by in-world interactive objects like phones, or by tapping NFC-triggered cards to terminals. Universal's Super Nintendo World and Wizarding World have quests and challenges that get triggered by bands and wands that tap or wave in certain places at the right time.
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These extra pieces all need to lean on more evolved phone apps, a thing that not everyone visiting a theme park or an art exhibit wants to start pulling out of their pockets. With Disney and Universal, phone apps have become overloaded. Meow Wolf's evolving phone app, which I tried in the Santa Fe and Denver exhibits this spring, is more mysterious -- and it's already overlapping with the physical places. Turning on a "psychic sensor" lets the app scan for Bluetooth beacons in the rooms you walk through. After your visit, you can open it up and see secrets you've unlocked: artifacts you may have missed, videos, bits of lore.
Meow Wolf's Kadlubek and Lee say the Niantic Spatial tech infusions will keep evolving that app's creative overlaps in new ways, and add an ARG-like series of game quests that will keep following you. They could even be used, potentially, to connect to pop-up experiences, other partner art exhibits or to trigger or organize performances. The ideas remind me of the potential I saw when Niantic first announced its Lightship world-mapped developer platform years ago, and a collaboration with immersive theater company Punchdrunk that was canceled before anything was created. I've seen promises of these types of overlaps and connections come and go. Are they actually starting to happen?
This time, however, the overlays could be coming in all sorts of ways. Meow Wolf's exhibits are going to be built for this tech integration going forward, said Lee. Existing exhibits are being retro-fitted and enhanced -- with the exception of the original, less tech-infused House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe.
I already got lost in Meow Wolf's mazes of dripping art, losing myself in other worlds. The collective's weird merchandise sits on my shelves, like escaped pieces of my journey. But maybe I'll be living in Meow Wolf's world all the time in the future. Is that where all our theme parks are heading, too?
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