Re-creating Hillary’s Antarctic Hut as a photoreal Virtual Reality experience

Hillary’s Hut Virtual Reality Experience is a collaborative research project that makes a significant science and exploration heritage site, situated in a remote and inaccessible location, accessible to a global audience through emerging virtual reality (VR) technology.

Hillary’s Hut was part of a cluster of buildings established in Antarctica in 1956-7 as part of Scott Base, New Zealand’s scientific facility and a listed Historic Monument. In 1953, fresh from conquering Everest, Sir Edmind Hillary was enlisted to lead the New Zealand party in the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic expedition. The hut that bears his name was originally built in 1957 and recently restored by the Antarctic Heritage Trust.

This project is a collaboration between AUT’s XR Lab (Centre for Design Research) and the Drone Lab (School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences), and external partners Antarctic Heritage Trust and Staples VR.

The AUT team included both Art & Design and Science staff and postgraduate students. This blend of disciplines helped realise a technically complex project deploying VR technology in the service of science and heritage communication.

Using 3D Lidar scanning technology provided by Staples VR, the science team led by Associate Professor Barbara Bollard captured a photoreal 3D snapshot of the historic hut.

The Art & Design team led by Gregory Bennett took that 3D data and worked on processing and optimising it for use in a game engine. They also developed the interactive narrative for the final virtual tour experience.

Master of Design research into digital heritage preservation undertaken by Katarina Markovic was instrumental in establishing an effective data clean-up and optimisation pipeline to produce the requisite photoreal quality in the final VR application.

Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund, delivered a welcome and introduction to the project. This was filmed in the AUT Green Screen studio then composited into the final VR experience. All of the prepared digital assets were then handed over to Staples VR for the final application build in the Unreal game engine.

The finished VR experience was launched by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in July 2020 at Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate School in Auckland. It has been made available for free download for mobile or HTC Vive Headset via the Apple and Google app stores, and Steam.

The project has established a technical and creative design pipeline for future collaborative research projects with Antarctic Heritage Trust and Staples VR.