Case study · Immersive experience
Waterways Ireland: the Virtual Canal Experience
Waterways Ireland’s first venture into virtual reality: a canal habitat, above and below the water.
- Customer
- Waterways Ireland
- Use
- Heritage and public engagement
- Built
- 2020
- Format
- VR experience, built to be extended
The brief
Tell the story of the canals’ heritage, natural, built and cultural, in Waterways Ireland’s first VR project.
The experience also had to show the strategic partnerships Waterways Ireland has built with its stakeholders.
It had to be accurate. Canals are important wildlife corridors, so every habitat had to match the baseline imagery Waterways Ireland supplied.
The solution: a canal, above and below the water
Mersus turned concept art and Waterways Ireland’s baseline imagery into a virtual canal: realistic vegetation, mammals with their own sounds, and an underwater scene with coarse fish, crayfish, aquatic plants and sunlight dappling through the water.
The project was built so that Waterways Ireland can add to it, augment it or change it in future.
From concept art to VR
What Waterways Ireland said
The Project Team offered excellent overall project management but in particular it was the creativity and attention to detail that made this project such a success. Having dedicated artistic input ensures that the VR experience becomes much more than a collection of digital assets: the story or message you wish to portray is equally as important.
Cormac McCarthy, Environment & Heritage Officer, Waterways Ireland
We provided them with a series of baseline imagery, all of which was met with stunning accuracy. This is especially important when dealing with important wildlife corridors like canals.
Cormac McCarthy, Environment & Heritage Officer, Waterways Ireland