In this Skip the Queue podcast episode, Andy Povey is joined by Calum Smail, Managing Director of Voxel Studio, to explore virtual experiences, digital twins and immersive technology in the attractions industry. They discuss how 3D visualisation and digital environments can transform attraction design, marketing and operations, and how virtual experiences can enhance the visitor journey before and after a physical visit.
Today, we’re looking at the world of virtual experiences, digital twins and immersive technology and asking a pretty interesting question: how far can technology take us when it comes to designing, experiencing and even operating attractions?
Andy Povey is joined by Calum Smail from Voxel Studio, a company working at the intersection of 3D, technology and immersive experiences.
Voxel Studio is doing some fascinating work around digital environments and virtual experiences, so today I want to explore what’s happening beyond the physical attraction – how technology is changing the way attractions are designed, marketed and experienced, and whether virtual worlds could actually make physical attractions better.
We’ll get into how you build a digital version of a real-world environment, where technologies like digital twins and 3D visualisation are heading, and what this could mean for operators looking to create more engaging experiences both before and after a visitor walks through the gates.
Topics Discussed
Creating memorable experiences on a budget
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Credits:
Written by Emily Burrows (Plaster)
Edited by Steve Folland
Produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle (Plaster)
Calum Smail: There's new tech that really pushes boundaries and that's where, you know, you go into a space and go, wow.
Andy Povey: Today we're going to be looking at the world of virtual experiences, digital twins and immersive technology. We're going to be asking a pretty interesting question. How far can technology take us when it comes to designing, experiencing and even operating attractions? I'm joined today by Callum Smail from Voxel Studio, the company working at the intersection of 3D technology and immersive experiences.
Calum Smail: We buzz off doing the physical stuff where you meet people, you can see a reaction. You can't see a reaction if something's online.
Andy Povey: Today we're going to explore what's happening beyond the physical attraction, how technology is changing the way attractions are designed, marketed and experienced, and whether virtual worlds could actually make physical attractions better.
Calum Smail: The zenith of it is forgetting where you are, you know you're being transported somewhere else.
Andy Povey: And what this could mean for operators looking to create more engaging experiences both before and after the visitor walks through the gates.
Calum Smail:You're not just an audience member, you actually become a participant.
Andy Povey: Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast by and for the attractions industry, brought to you by Merac. I'm your host, Andy Povey.
Calum Smail: We started Voxel a week before COVID Interesting timing. So straight away we had to pivot. We create interactive experiences for brand activations, for museums, for visitor centers and immersive theatre, that kind of thing.
Andy Povey: A tech company then.
Calum Smail: I think one of our kind of key points is that we're kind of creative and tech and we can talk both languages, we can talk to the agencies about art and nice pretty things, but we can also talk geek to all the tech heads. So I think that's kind of our niche. We kind of. We kind of in the middle of. Of the creative and. And tech side of things.
Andy Povey: As a geek myself or pseudo geek is actually the best place to exist, isn't it?
Calum Smail: I think so, yeah. I'm a very proud geek.
Andy Povey: Yeah. Talking about that position, that intersection between creative and technology, using both to create an experience which comes first, which is most important on any new project.
Calum Smail: Ideally, the guest experience is first and foremost. It doesn't always happen that way. We do a lot of work with agencies and we love working with agencies. Sometimes a brief is fully formed and we have two weeks to implement it. Other times we have 18 months and we can really go on a journey and. And kind of work out what's best for the guest or every kind of stage in between. So we're happy to do Both, but yeah, the guest should always come first.
Andy Povey: Fantastic. Yeah, that's one of our mission statements in our company. So I agree completely with you. Do you remember the first IMAX films?
Calum Smail: I don't, no.
Andy Povey: No, that for me was always as an example of how you shouldn't put tech first. Cause you got some fantastic technology but without the creative storytelling, it was boring.
Calum Smail: Yeah. We do a lot of work for exhibitions as well as the other stuff that we do. And you just won't believe the amount of times I get phone calls at 8 o' clock at night when the exhibition's the next day and they say, “Cal, we've got this big LED wall which they've obviously spent a lot of money on, but they haven't got any content.” It absolutely baffles me how content isn't thought of as a primary thing and they spend all this money on fancy tech, but then the content and the messages is lacking.
Andy Povey: How do you ensure that you make a piece of tech feel like it's part of the experience rather than just something that's bolted on? I haven't just put this flashy light here because it's a new design of light projection.
Calum Smail: Yeah. I think that partly comes from the brief how much we get involved in at the ground floor. As I said, we sometimes get real tight deadlines on stuff. It's just a case of delivering as, you know, as per the agency spec. If it's our kind of, if we've got more time to formulate, then we've just got to make sure that tech isn't the primary thing. I think tech's two fold though. I think this kind of long standing tech that doesn't wow people like touchscreens, even projectors, stuff that everyone's seen a million times before unless it's been done in scale like Sphere or, you know, or Cosm or something like that, or really designed with architecture. But then there's new tech that really pushes boundaries and that's where, you know, you go into a space and go, wow.
Calum Smail: You know, that's the kind of stuff I'm really interested in. We went Tokyo, went to, to Disneyland. Disneysea. We did the new Peter Pan ride there. I wasn't expecting very much because the Peter Pan ride at the other parks is quite an old technology. But the one at Disneysea was, it was just like, whoa, that's really impressive. Really enjoyed that. So, yeah, tech, for me, it's tech's twofold. It's the stuff that pushes boundaries is really interesting to me and all the robotic stuff that people are doing.
Andy Povey: One thing that really bugs me about my side of the experience delivery is this focus on AI chatbots and how you can have a little widget in the bottom right hand corner of your computer screen and some machines going to tell you how to do what it is you need to do. And then it annoys me because that machine's only reading the pages that I've just already read. So it's only telling me stuff I already know. So I think they're being massively overhyped on your side of things. What are we at risk of overhyping?
Calum Smail: I completely agree with you. AI it's overhyped, both from a benefit, but also a negative. I think there's a lot of posts on LinkedIn for both and general social media. I think we shouldn't be afraid of it, but at the same time we should be cautious of it. I don't even like using when you're on a video call and there's an AI note tracker. I personally don't like those, probably because I can't make silly jokes. But yeah. And then sometimes you don't even get asked permission if you're there. And the permission's a really interesting thing though about these. The AI glasses, aren't they? There's a really fine line on what's reasonable and how you use those glasses and what's stepping into privacy concerns. AI is we use it all the time though. But we use it for kind of boring things.
Calum Smail: You know, it's stuff that just takes. Would take us ages to do and it gives us more time to be creative. So I'm all for it. And yeah, I don't think we should be too afraid of using.
Andy Povey: No, I agree completely. It's a tool, isn't it?
Calum Smail: Yeah.
Andy Povey: And like any tool, it's good at what it's there for. But you can go too far. I was reading earlier, I don't know if you've seen this story about the branch of Sainsbury's. The threw someone out because the AI CCTV system they had in place mistook him for a known shoplifter.
Calum Smail: Did you know what happened? That almost happened to me in Sainsbury's. Not quite the same. But I was kind of fiddling in my pocket in front of the tail and there was some alert on the screen that I was doing something.
Andy Povey: But you're a bad lad.
Calum Smail: Yes. It wasn't me. I think the Experience economy is quite, is going to be quite resilient though. On the whole, I think we're in a good position because it's a very physical, human based sector. I think if I was something that was just a desk job, I might be slightly concerned. But I'm in my full 5 point PPE today. I'm on site and I've been on site for kind of almost three weeks doing a visitor centre hands on. You need to plug cables in, you need to do the fabrication, you need to do the pat testing, make sure everything works. Robots aren't there yet to do that kind of thing. So I think as a sector, I think touchwood, it should be quite resilient.
Andy Povey: We've talked about what we're overhyping, what are we ignoring, what are we under hyping? If underhyping is a phrase that I'm allowed to use.
Calum Smail: I think it is a phrase, yeah. For me it's. I started off, my degree was music technology. It's how I met the four other members of Katapult in the beginning.
Andy Povey: Okay. Yeah.
Calum Smail: We started off putting on nightclubs, events, DJs, visuals, and then we, then we started capo as an actual business. So for me it's audio. It's an especially spatial audio. It always gets forgotten about and I think there's so much opportunity with audio. Have you done Darkfield before?
Andy Povey: No. Tell me.
Calum Smail: It's in shipping containers and you go in and you put headphones on and there's different experiences. There's one where you sit, you go into the shipping container and then you put these headphones on and it's spatial audio so you can hear stuff all around you. You're sat on a fake plane and then there's rumble strips. I did it. And it was, it just absolutely wowed me that I knew it was spatial audio. But then someone was talking behind me in the spatial audio and I was like, why is someone talking behind me? We've started the experience. And then I was just like, “Oh, you idiot.”
Andy Povey: You fell for it.
Calum Smail: “Literally what we're there for.” There was one that we did at Alton Towers a couple of years ago of the Scare Mazes. That was a spatial audio as well that I really enjoy. I think there's so much opportunity in mixing audio, not just with headphones, but in a, you know, a room physical sense matching that up with visuals. So I think it's left a lot of the time. But I think from where I started and, you know, my degree putting on, on night shows. I think audio is a key thing we should look at.
Andy Povey: Many, many years ago I worked at Rock Circus in Piccadilly Circus. Oh yeah. It's actually where I met my wife. And for those listeners that don't know about Rock Circus, it was an offshoot of Madame Tussaud all about rock and pop and that was all delivered through headphones. But the operational management of those headphones was disaster, was that you'd have a really hot summer like we just have and you'd have members of staff walking around with sweat dripping off these headphones and giving them out to the next customer.
Calum Smail: Oh, nice.
Andy Povey: Disgusting, sweaty headphones. And the cost of these things was phenomenal. Or it meant that delivery of tech became unreliable and were talking this must be 20 years ago, 25 years ago. So the tech was naturally less advanced as it is now, but it was a continual problem. I love the idea of not using headphones. We talk a lot about immersive, possibly the most overused word in our industry at the moment. Talk to me about your feelings about the word immersive.
Calum Smail: I don't mind the word. It's definitely a Marmite word. I totally hear you on that. I think just the word is just sort of the zenith of it is forgetting where you are and you know you're being transported somewhere else. You can be immersed in a book or music, but yeah, so the tech isn't sort of a prerequisite to be immersed.
Andy Povey: It's an enabler. It helps.
Calum Smail: It does, yeah. And you have to. The best kind of immersive experience is where you don't take someone out of the immersion like you don't have someone in 5 point PPE when everyone should be hidden. For me, the interesting immersive experiences is when you are not just an audience member, you kind of, you actually become a participant in it. That's what really excites me. We did a project for Fever last year for Dexter, the TV show that was through the Experience Agency. Great project. End client was Paramount. It was in Shoreditch. It was a week event and there was. There were seven different rooms and then there was, it was actor led. We did all the technical production, the lighting, the escape room design, all the software programming.
Calum Smail: But yeah, being involved in that kind of immersive experience and one of the rooms was a kind of a scare bit and then just hearing people just kind of laugh at the chainsaw going off, it was such a good experience. And that project won. You know, you got. This is quite a mouthful. It won Adweek's Best International Experiential Activation last year. So yeah, really proud of that one.
Andy Povey: Oh fantastic. You need to get me on your mailing list. I need to hear about these things that are coming up in London.
Calum Smail: Do you know it was only on for a week and I think it sold out. I mean Theba did a great job promoting it obviously, but it was all for superfans. I think it sold out instantly. But that added extra pressure on us because
Andy Povey: I can imagine, yeah.
Calum Smail: Superfans do not take things lightly that, you know, we had to deliver, we had to get the pulses right, the timing right. Nothing needed to fail. And yeah, it was a great project.
Andy Povey: What are you anticipating in 10 years time? What's the tract of 2036 look like?
Calum Smail: I'd like to see more exploration, more control over the story and more free roaming. A bit like what? You know, the great work of punch drunk secret cinema, Phantom Peak, that kind of thing. I'd like to see that more. A little bit like nightclub culture again. Going back to that again.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Calum Smail: The WXO London Experience week was in the Ministry of Sound this year and I was just sort of wandering around, just sort of remembering what it was like to go to clubs and stuff and just exploring and going into little random rooms and then talking with various people. And I've talked to a few people about this and a lot of the people in the experience economy started out in the nightclub industry. It kind of really resonates on that. Yeah, more control over the story, more theater, more payoffs. Not just one big sort of you have a queue and then you have your payoff for two minutes. I think more little things going on. I'd like to see sort of more gta, less coronation streak, you know, more control over stuff and less just passive watching.
Andy Povey: So control for the visitor.
Calum Smail: Yeah, I think so. That won't be exclusively that because there'll be stuff that, you know, you are an audience and you are watching. But I think participation is a key thing that will grow. And also I don't know how we tackle. But getting people off their phones would be a wonderful thing.
Andy Povey: Completely agree.
Calum Smail: But it's a really difficult thing to have to deal with because people want to take photos and I'm the same. But you have to live in the moment and you have to enjoy the experience but at the same time you want to record the experience. We kind of risk having the Santorini effect of attractions where people queue for an hour, they're dressed in blue and then they stand, get the shot of Santorini and then it goes straight up on the ground.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Calum Smail: And everyone's queuing, doing the same thing for that. We went to Santorini and I was like, I looked at the line, I was like, I know, forget this. And then I just took a quick photo. Off we go. Let's let you know, let's take it in lots. But it's difficult.
Andy Povey: No, I agree completely. For a while I was convinced that if my wife didn't stop at the entrance and post on Facebook that were going to an attraction and know did we actually go or do the big part.
Calum Smail: Did it happen? Yeah, there was. I went to a team lab in Tokyo a few months ago as well. And it was. Capacities are kind of a challenge as well because obviously attractions need to make money. Obviously that, you know, that's, that's one of the main things they need to do. But I found there was a lot of people just sat on some of the key elements in the team lab and there was this one family who was just sat on this, one of the main pieces of kind of interior architecture. And I was like, “That was my shot. I was trying to get.” And they were just looking so glum and I was like, just get out the way because you're sitting on the thing you look at.
Calum Smail: I want to take a picture. But then it goes back to the thing about people wanting to take pictures. And I saw this week as well, it was on, I don't know, some social media. I don't know how true this is because I haven't been to a, a gig in a while, but a gig or a night. Back in the day there wouldn't have been phones, so people just danced and had fun. But now people are on their phones, just stood there just filming it. It's a challenge.
Andy Povey: No, there's a. One of my favorite stories is a forest based attraction. Did some augmented reality with the Gruffalo. Oh yeah. So you could get a picture of your child next to a tree stump with the little brown mouse or the Gruffalo appearing in the background. So you as a parent got to experience this through your phone.
Calum Smail: Yeah.
Andy Povey: Whereas your child got to experience looking at their parent with the phone in their hand, ignoring them. Yeah, yeah. Disaster in terms of experience. So I agree completely. I don't know quite how we do it. Maybe we know only the glasses instead.
Calum Smail: I was just about to say, I think that's where the glasses are going to come in. But used in a sort of a careful and controlled way. So you know, you're going to a space where people wear these glasses so your privacy isn't being invaded there because you are.
Andy Povey: You've chosen to be there.
Calum Smail: Yeah. And I think there is a lot of merit to that.
Andy Povey: I think we probably still got something to learn from theatre where at the start of the performance everybody is told to put their phones away and make sure that they're not going to disturb the experience for anyone else. That's probably two ends of the spectrum, isn't it?
Calum Smail: Yeah, I know, Universal. They make you put your phones in the lockers as well before the rides, which I imagine is for safety more than anything else. But. Yeah, but then there's how do you capture and record that moment? I guess that's an upsell for the operators though, isn't it?
Andy Povey: Well, yeah, I mean it's an interesting conversation, an interesting thought. I hadn't really considered it from that perspective before. We did many years ago when I was at what was then the Two Swords Group, we did a project at Alton Towers with capturing photos through and a really big RFID identification bracelet that we ask people to wear and then we try and sell them a video of their day, their experience. Yeah. So maybe there are elements of that kind of thing where you don't need the bracelet anymore. Facial recognition cameras will, software will pick you up. So can we take the capture of that photographic capture of your experience out of your hands, deliver it for you?
Calum Smail: Disney do it really well with their PhotoPass at Disney World especially. You go on the Tron ride, you don't have to even do anything, I don't think. And then it takes a picture of you and it takes a video of you as well. And you didn't have to do anything and it just lands up on your phone. It's like, “Ah! great”. So the tech is there.
Andy Povey: Obviously it's a potential revenue stream, but maybe we should be looking at it from an experiential point of view as well. We've talked about wanting to get phones away and making attractions the antidote to screen time. Do you think we're going to see a more of a reaction against tech? I mean we've got the legislation that came in recently to restrict social media. Are we going to see more of a backlash against phone first culture that we've created or that we've landed ourselves in.
Calum Smail: Yeah, I think so. There's always reactions from when go too deep in one direction, isn't there? And then there's always a bounce back. Whether or not it bounces back to where it started off or it just bounces back a bit. But there'll always be balance at the end. But kind of we're seeing that with vinyl, aren't we now?
Andy Povey: Very much so.
Calum Smail: You can spend £50 on an LP now or. Which is just crazy. But it's that, it's the tactile physical and the time it takes to put the LP on, on the player instead of into Apple music and pressing play. And I think it's happening with AI too. There is a pushback on AI and AI Slop, isn't there?
Andy Povey: Yes. Yeah.
Calum Smail: And I think that's where there is an opportunity for the real craft and creativity to be thought of as premium. I think there's opportunity there. Like don't. Let's not worry about local businesses using AI to do their graphic design. That's, you know, that shouldn't worry anyone particularly. I think let's hone our craft and let's use that time to be really creative. But it's happened before, hasn't it? Through the ages, the Industrial revolution that like hundreds of thousands of craft makers used to make our products, didn't they? And then, and then machines made them. So we have been there before. Obviously it took a generation and probably a lot of poverty for a lot of people to be able to pivot to doing a new job. But you know, we'll get there.
Andy Povey: I was talking to the creative director for Little Lion Entertainment and their Pacman Live experience where you get in the maze and you run around and you'll chase behind the ghosts. That physical experience of what was the digital product.
Calum Smail: Yeah, it's something that I'm really. The physical side. I'm really passionate. We did websites for a while. We did. When I left Katapult on my little wandering journey, I did. I moved into doing Flash websites.
Andy Povey: Oh yeah?
Calum Smail: Yeah. Really enjoyed it. You know we won lots of awards with our Flash websites. And then, and then Steve Jobs decided to kill it.
Andy Povey: Yeah, we're not using that anymore.
Calum Smail: It was an absolute slaughter. And then web just turned really boring at that point and it took years to recover and make it interesting again. So yeah, we used to do a lot of web and it wasn't physical. It wasn't until we started to do conductive inkwalls in Vegas and Europe that we started to get an appreciation for doing the physical attraction stuff. And since then we try and do less and less, just purely digital stuff. We buzz off doing the physical stuff where you meet people and you can see a reaction. You can't see a reaction if something's online. That's what we love doing.
Andy Povey: There's one question I try and ask everybody, every guest that we have on Skip the Queue, and that's really to find something back to our listeners. So if you were operating in the traction today and you didn't necessarily have the budget to look at a big tech experience, what would be your piece of advice to someone in that position?
Calum Smail: I think going back to the point we're saying about technology and it's weird because we are kind of a large part. Everything we do has some kind of technology or some kind of software, some kind of content. But don't think about the tech first because it's. It's the wrong way to do stuff. Think about the guest, think about what they would want to see and then the tech will follow. It might be that you think of a great idea and then that the technology might actually not be. That is as expensive as you might have thought, or it might not need to be as. As grand as you thought. Spend the time on the creative.
Andy Povey: Callum, thank you. I've really enjoyed our conversation. I love your definition of immersive. You might be changing my opinion on the word.
Calum Smail: Are you not a fan of the word?
Andy Povey: I'm not. I think it's just massively overused. For me, I immerse myself in a bath or a swimming pool.
Thank you for listening. I hope you found it useful. If you like what you've heard, please do leave us a review or recommendation. It really helped others to find us. Today's episode has been produced by Emily and Sammy from Plaster, edited by Steve Folland, with scheduling and socials by Wenalyn back at Merac Hq, I've been your host, Andy Povey, and until next time, thank you and goodbye.