KC’s WWI Museum employs tech used at Vegas Sphere to bring war stories to life
Published: 22 May 2025
By Dominick Williams
via the Kansas City Star newspaper website
KC Museum technology
A first hand account from WWI soldier Melville Miller, is reenacted by an actor in Encounters, a new exhibit at the World War I Museum and Memorial, opened to the media for a sneak peak ahead of Memorial Day.
The National WWI Museum and Memorial has undergone some big changes over the last three years. The latest is a one-of-a-kind, immersive exhibit to its already loaded walls.
Encounters, the new exhibit, uses storytelling bolstered by state-of-the-art audio and video technology to share first-person narratives from individuals whose lives were deeply impacted by the Great War.
Allied and Central Power soldiers, a bloodied war-time nurse, dissenters from both sides, factory workers and more, portrayed by actors and actresses in high-tech videos, share their stories that were pulled from diary entries, recordings, and other historical documentation, researched by the museum.
“We’ve researched and taken 16 stories, letters, diaries, memoirs, interviews, and in people’s own words, we’ve recreated their storytelling. It’s really quite extraordinary. Unlike anything else, at any other museum,” says Matthew Naylor, president of the WWI Museum and Memorial.
National WWI Museum and Memorial staff take in Encounters, a new exhibit at the World War I Museum and Memorial, opened to the media for a sneak peak ahead of Memorial Day, on Wednesday, May 21, 2025. The exhibit uses immersive technology to share first-person narratives, performed by actors, of those impacted by the Great War. The exhibit uses immersive lighting, ultra fine LED boards, and Holoplot spacial audio, the same as used in the Sphere in Las Vegas.
The exhibit features groundbreaking technology, including Holoplot spatial audio (also used at The Sphere in Las Vegas) that provides a sort of individual surround system, ultra-fine LED that shows every detail in the scenes with remarkable clarity, and unique lighting designs that makes the viewer feel like they are looking right into the characters’ lives.
→ Read the entire article on the Kansas City Star website.
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