Sky to bring Sir David Attenborough VR tour of the Natural History Museum to Windows Mixed Reality

Sky VR has announced a new project called Hold the World which will take viewers behind the scenes for a tour of the Natural History Museum guided by David Attenborough.

“Hold the World is an extraordinary next step in how we can communicate and educate people about experiences they wouldn’t usually have access to in the real world,” explains Attenborough. “I am delighted about what users can learn and discover from the Natural History Museum’s treasures in this new VR experience – it really is one of the most convincing and bewitching experiences that the world of technology has yet produced.”

The tour lets you view areas normally inaccessible to visitors, including the Conservation Centre, the Earth Sciences Library and the Cryptogamic Herbarium and let you manipulate items normally too fragile to pick up, such as rare fossils. The models were created by the museums CT department scanning items in high detail.

“Virtual reality is a really important new tool for getting our specimens out there and letting the public see them really up close and manipulate them,” says Professor Paul Barrett, a Natural History Museum dinosaur expert who worked on the stegosaurus model and animation.

“It’s the first time people will actually be able to hold these objects, pull them around and make them larger and smaller. It’s been a really exciting development for us here, because we are also seeing it in new ways for the first time too.”

The Hold The World experience will first be delivered as a standalone app via the Windows Store to Windows Mixed Reality, but the full Sky VR app is also coming to the platform later this year. The Sky VR app will also deliver the experience on Google Daydream View, Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Rift.

Via Alphr.com