TimeRide brings the African savanna to life with mixed reality at Cologne Zoo

TimeRide has been developing immersive visitor experiences since 2016. The company opened its first attraction in Cologne in 2017, using virtual reality, staged environments and multisensory effects to make historical periods feel physically present. Since then, its formats have expanded across several German locations, while TimeRide Studios has developed digital education, entertainment and museum applications for external partners.

Savanna VR applies the same core idea to a different subject. Instead of reconstructing a historical city, the project uses immersive media to explain a living ecosystem. Visitors are not only shown information about the savanna. They move through it, change perspective and interact with elements of the environment.

The experience begins with a technical onboarding. ARuco markers are used to position visitors in the space and help establish the mixed reality environment before the educational content begins.

At the first station, an interactive virtual globe appears in augmented reality. Visitors learn where savannas occur, how different types of savanna develop and what makes the ecosystem distinctive. The experience then transitions into full VR, transporting the group into a sequence of scenes across the African savanna.

The change in medium is important to the storytelling. Rather than observing the environment from a single viewpoint, visitors encounter it from different scales and positions, from elevated perspectives to ground level and below the water surface. A narrator provides context throughout the journey and connects the individual scenes into a coherent story.

At the second station, the experience returns to augmented reality in the interactive ‘Playground Savanna’. Visitors can explore virtual environments themselves and see how animal life and the landscape change between dry and rainy seasons. Simple interactions allow each group to progress through the content at a natural pace.

The central challenge was not simply to create convincing virtual environments. TimeRide needed to translate a complex ecosystem into an experience that could work for a broad public audience, including families and younger visitors, while balancing education, storytelling and entertainment.

Savanna VR is recommended from age six, is available in German and English and is designed for groups of up to eight people at the same time. That places clear demands on the interaction design: instructions need to be understandable quickly, transitions between modes need to feel natural and the experience has to remain engaging even for visitors with little or no prior VR experience.

Savanna VR combines spatial onboarding, augmented reality, virtual reality and interactive AR applications within the same visitor journey. TimeRide selected Meta Quest 3 as the standalone headset platform for the deployment, with its TIMEPORT software managing the experience.

VR Expert supplied the Meta Quest 3 hardware and supported TimeRide in selecting a suitable headset setup for the project. For a visitor attraction, the hardware decision has to account for more than visual performance. The headset also needs to support mixed reality workflows, straightforward operation and repeat use in a public environment.

By working with VR Expert on the hardware side, TimeRide could keep its focus on the concept, dramaturgy, content, interaction design and technical implementation of the experience itself.

The finished installation brings AR, VR and interaction together in a single standalone experience. Visitors first understand the savanna at a global level, then enter it from the perspective of its inhabitants, and finally explore seasonal changes through direct interaction.

For Cologne Zoo, that creates an additional layer of interpretation around the new giraffe enclosure. For TimeRide, Savanna VR demonstrates how the company’s immersive storytelling approach can extend beyond historical edutainment into environmental and scientific subjects. For VR Expert, the project shows the role that well-matched XR hardware can play behind a public-facing experience: supporting the content reliably while remaining largely invisible to the visitor.