Immersive / XR
A virtual museum that lets readers step inside a printed art book
a schoolbook publisher
A schoolbook publisher wanted readers of a printed art book to step inside the works, not just look at them on the page. DigitalBorders built the companion app — a virtual museum in Unity, shipped to iOS and Android from one codebase, that you walk through on a phone or in stereoscopic VR with Google Cardboard.
- Unity
- C#
- Google Cardboard
- iOS
- Android
- Firebase
Context
The publisher makes a printed art title and wanted it to extend past the page — a companion app where a reader can move through the works in a virtual museum rather than scroll a gallery. It had to feel like part of the same object as the book, and it had to run on the phones readers already carry. They brought the build to DigitalBorders.
Problem
Putting a museum on a phone is a budget problem before it is an art problem.
- A gallery of high-resolution works has to render and navigate smoothly on a phone — a mobile GPU and a tight memory budget, not a desktop.
- One build, two stores. iOS and Android from a single codebase, each with its own signing, plugins, and quirks to satisfy.
- Immersion has to stay comfortable. Free movement through the space, a UI that reads correctly in 3D, and an optional headset-style mode that doesn't make people queasy.
- It's a companion, not a separate product. The app has to feel like an extension of the printed book, not an unrelated download.
Approach
We built the app in Unity (C#) as a navigable virtual museum: a 3D gallery of the book's works that the reader moves through freely, with an in-world, curved UI that stays legible in the space rather than pinned flat to the screen.
A Google Cardboard mode renders the gallery in stereoscopic VR for readers who want to be inside it, while the same space works as an ordinary handheld 3D experience for everyone else — one museum, two ways in. A single Unity project targets both iOS and Android, and Firebase handles crash reporting and analytics so we see real-device problems across a fragmented install base instead of guessing at them.
The whole experience is budgeted for mobile: the assets and post-processing are tuned to hold a steady frame rate on the phones readers actually own, because a museum that stutters breaks the illusion faster than one that looks plainer.
Outcome
A reader opens the app alongside the book and walks through the works in 3D — or drops into Cardboard VR for a headset-style view of the same space. The publisher ships one app to both app stores, and a printed title gains an immersive layer without becoming a different product.