A lot has been made of the new “Immersive Venues” that are being developed and The Stinger Report covered a number of these plans in our end of 2020 coverage. One of those sites that has received much media coverage has been the AREA15 location in Las Vegas.
Ambitiously launching to guests in September of 2020, the venue is described as an immersive entertainment and event complex, part of a 126,000-square-foot project, comprising unique exhibits, dining, retail, and entertainment in a free-to-enter environment. The venue is developed as a collaborative venture between Fisher Brothers and Beneville Studios.
The venue has hopes to offer a new ecosystem for retail, entertainment and hospitality, and is part of a great business plan that will see an interpretation of the concept, actively looking for other suitable locations in major cities to open this “Immersive Destination”. Entertainment plays a vital part in the thinking behind this new ecosystem and, since opening, a better idea of how these elements will fit into the mix of the evolving concept have been revealed, in what the developers have labelled their “immersive playground”.
One of the first VR entertainment installations to open with the venue was ‘Birdly’ – the highly physical virtual reality flying simulator by Somniacs. The company has been partnered with D3D Cinema for distribution to the US museum market, and The Stinger Report has reported on the platform’s progression – most recently announcing that, along with the AREA15 installation, the company has installed its immersive experience at CK Architecture in Dubai, the Vienna Technical Museum, and Birdlife Zurich. They have additionally developed the new ‘CitiesWeR Zurich Experience’ that is now available worldwide, allowing users to fly over Switzerland’s iconic city both in winter and summer and by night or during the day.
But AREA15 includes a second VR installation, with the breaking news that France-based VR developer BackLight has partnered with the location to install the first of their Free-Roaming multi-player area systems called ‘OZ Experience. This is a dedicated 1,800-sq.ft. unit, created within the space to house a multiplayer VR backpack experience. It is based on the HTC VIVE hardware and content created by the developer, including the unique ‘ECLIPSE’ – a space-based virtual escape game. The 35-minute experiences can accommodate up-to-four players. Supporting this space, Backlight has also developed a unique element called ‘OZ Ride’ – offering three-to-four-minute motion seated rides, called ‘Far Reach’ and ‘Birdy King Land’. The VR motion ride system uses D-BOX hardware.
This development from BackLight comes as the operation ramps up its venue support, rolling out the ‘OZ Experience’ that offers a selection of the company’s licensed VR experiences in a package for venues to roll into their operations. The company has been developing VR experiences since 2014, with some 70 projects under its belt. The Stinger Report previously covered the successful installation in Paris, at Illucity, of the operation’s free-roam adventure ‘TOYLAND’. The company is now moving into making its popular platforms more wildly available for new operators.
Rendering of the ‘OZ Experience’ layout [BackLight]
The immersive playground that is AREA15 is not just populated with VR – the venue has at least one AR-based attraction on opening, with ‘Particle Quest’. It is an augmented reality walking experience, with guests putting on a Particle Quest Mask (which in reality is an AR headset), and then navigating the space by following virtual nano-particles that lead the way, triggering elements on an interactive narrative and revealing the secret backstory of AREA15, all played through the mask. This is an attraction with a description very reminiscent of the ‘Unreal Garden’ installation covered in The Stinger Report back in 2018, at the short-lived Onedome venue.
Away from the virtual and augmented, one of the anchor tents of AREA15, wooed by the owners Fisher Brothers, is Meow Wolf – taking their eclectic art installation and pop-up background and turning this to the creation of their ‘Omega Mart’ permanent exhibition. It is an eclectic cross between shock and surprise in a grocery store style visage. This move by the operation into an entertainment destination approach is the beginning of a pivot by the operation towards a more conventional entertainment portfolio, after undergoing management restructuring.
Area 15 is heavily projection-mapped
Part of this new focus by Meow Wolf has been towards establishing a place in the development of such future projects, moving away from their art installation roots and looking at an immersive venue future. With this came the announcement that the founder and director of Meow Wolf would be launching a location-based entertainment consulting agency called Spatial Activations. The hope of this new operation is to assist commercial developers to design future installations.
The immersive playground envisaged by AREA15 also comprises physical entertainment elements such as ‘Haley’s Comet’ – a suspended zipline installation. Along with an 18-lane axe throwing attraction, originally called ‘Duelling Axes’. There are also pop-up installations such as ‘Brainstorm’ – a live reaction room enclosure; and ‘Museum Fiasco’ – an immersive audio-visual installation by Playmodes Studio. The venue is still leaning heavily on a physical and immersive design ethos, with extensive blacklight and illuminated structures as the theme.
Illuminarium Coming
One of the new entrants planned for a 2022 opening at AREA15, is the immersive digital experience Illuminarium. There are plans to open a third venue at the Las Vegas site, with 360-degree multiple 4K laser projectors, and a Holoplot sound system environment is proposed to be a new experiential attraction. The operation released information of the first experience to inhabit the first of the planned sites during CES’21 – with ‘Wild: The World’s First Virtual Safari’ experience (the audience experience). The Illuminarium operators are looking to open 30 locations in the next five years. The first venue is scheduled for a Q3-2021 opening in Atlanta, with a Q4-2021 schedule for the second in Miami, and this additional to AREA15 will be going up against the MGS Sphere attraction which is planned to open in the same window.
AREA15 also comprises several hospitality spaces, including the ‘Oddwood’ central bar and event space, themed with their signature offering, wanting to be an immersive bazaar. The site also includes other food and drink elements and is even organizing an immersive indoor picnic concept (called ‘Cloud 9’). Obviously, for Las Vegas and the global entertainment scene, 2020 was a trying year, and AREA15 has yet to fully establish its offering, having been temporarily closed and only now starting the process of fully reopening. With a reported capacity of 3,000, the venue has started again with a new cap of 750-per-day. The venue held a New Year event (“Illuminate 2021”), as part of the moves to fully relaunch, emerging to show its full potential in 2021.
AREA15 is an ongoing work in progress which the owners hope to evolve and perfect once the audience reactions are better assessed. The Stinger Report will be visiting the venue in the coming months, so expect a detailed report on this ambitious project. Kevin Williams
Kevin Williams is the publisher of the Stinger Report, from which this article was taken, with kind permission.
