Ripley's

GestureTek GroundFX and ScreenXtreme adds visual appeal and interactivity to Ripley’s Museums – and even lets people walk on water!

August 2007 – The Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” franchise began in 1918 as a series of newspaper cartoons that featured unusual and startling facts from around the world.  Today, Ripley’s operates over 60 attraction and entertainment facilities around the globe.  For their new Times Square location, the company wanted something truly memorable and awe-inspiring to kick-start attendance and elevate the customer experience to new heights.

Ripley’s approached GestureTek after seeing the ScreenXtreme system in action.  The company wanted a rich dynamic display solution incorporating dynamic visual content that could be manipulated with body movement, creating a fully immersive, gesture-controlled interactive experience. 

The company also wanted to utilize GestureTek’s award-winning GroundFX visual display system, having seen it successfully employed at other venues. GroundFX projects dynamic, interactive visual content onto any sized floor.  Content can be anything from a digital advertisement, to dazzling special effects to an interactive digital game. State-of-the-art body tracking softward enables participants to use their hand, feet, or any body part, to control and interact with the display in real time.

For this customized project GestureTek created a virtual music application for Ripley’s.  The ScreenXtreme system captures a visitor’s real-time image and magically places them into a virtual music room.  With a gesture of their hand, the visitor can activate a series of instruments, creating their very own virtual symphony. 

GestureTek also installed a GroundFX system, projected from beneath the entrance staircase.  As visitors descend the stairs, they step onto a ‘virtual pond’.  The pond tracks body motion, creating ripples in the water with every step they take and simulating the experience of walking on water. 

“Ripley’s is ecstatic about public reaction to the GestureTek installations, and the hype that video-based gesture control technology created around the opening of  our newest location,” said  David Neithardt, franchisee of Ripley's.

With cutting edge technologies at their disposal, courtesy of GestureTek, Ripley’s instilled a sense of wonder and astonishment in visitors and, most of all, a glimpse into the fantastical….”Believe It Or Not!”.

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