The Queen Victoria exhibition, which is on display at both Yesterday's World Museums at Battle and Great Yarmouth, depicts life during the reign of  Queen Victoria. The exhibition is targeted at school children learning about the life and times of this era and forms part of their KS2 and KS3 objectives. It includes mannequins dressed as Queen Victoria and other members of her royal family, artefacts from her life and there is also an interactive information system giving details about life during her reign.
The information system consists of two 46-inch monitors, one in portrait mode showing Queen Victoria and the other in landscape mode showing relevant subject matter.  The portrait of Queen Victoria is created by computer-generated imagery (CGI)  which show her breathing and talking, with her mouth movements synchronised to the words. The landscape monitor shows original film clips and newly filmed scenes processed to look original. The computer generated images shows items moving in 3D.

The topic areas can be chosen on a touch computer and these are as follows:

     - Queen Victoria's Family Tree

     - Inventions during Victoria's reign

     - Children's lives in Victorian times

     - Battle Museum - Local history in Battle
       Great Yarmouth Museum - Local history in Great Yarmouth

When none of the above is playing, the 'portrait' Queen Victoria gives an introduction to life during her reign. The total playing time of the introduction and all four topics is 26 minutes.

When a visitor selects a topic on the touchscreen, a usage file records their selection so that the museum management can see how many times each topic was selected on any day.

The Queen Victoria exhibition area is monitored by PIRS. When there are no visitors the equipment goes into a low energy sleep mode and when someone approaches, it wakes up and Queen Victoria starts her introduction from the beginning.

Click here to play a video clip about this exhibit

Steve Jenkinson of Pilot Models says:

"The original project was to replace a very old animatronic Queen Victoria at Yesterday's World in Battle East Sussex with a CGI portrait, but as the ideas developed the client required a more complex system as to match the new Royal Exhibition.
We developed the concept and Paul Oliver of Brantham Electronics designed a remarkable system, controlled by a touch-screen interface with two DVD players running in sync, which we had never seen before.
The system has proved to be reliable and a great success, so much so that the client ordered another complete system for his other attraction in Great Yarmouth."

 Links:
This exhibit can be seen at Yesterday's World in either Battle or Great Yarmouth: Yesterday's World
Project creation and Video Production: Pilot Studios
Exhibition Fit-out: DWA