Our Epic Journey into Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum
Wevr Brings Ancient China to Life Using Immersive Storytelling & Cutting Edge Technologies
Nearly 50 years ago, local farmers discovered the massive underground mausoleum of China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang. In the decades since, as the site has continued to be excavated, millions of visitors have flocked to witness part of ancient Chinese history. Now, for the first time ever, Wevr, alongside our partner VIVE Arts, is proud to open this 8th wonder of the world to everyone, with an immersive experience allowing visitors to explore the emperor’s mausoleum, 2,200 years after his death. Thanks to the power of immersive virtual reality, visitors can walk among his legendary Terracotta Army and for the first time explore the secrets of the emperor’s eternal resting place.
The scale and cultural significance hit them immediately when Neville Spiteri, Wevr's Producer, CoFounder and CEO, and Luis Blackaller, our Creative Lead, first visited the mausoleum site in Xi'an, China—walking among the excavated terracotta warrior pits. They said to the Wevr team: "This isn't just another VR project, this is a special opportunity to create a bridge across the millennia, connecting modern audiences with one of history's most ambitious rulers and the archaeological wonder that bears his name." The Terracotta Army, discovered by local farmers in 1974, represents one of the most significant archaeological finds of the 20th century: over 8,000 unique warriors, each with individual facial features, have stood guard over their emperor’s final resting place for more than two millennia.
A Partnership Rooted in Historical Authenticity
Working alongside our partner VIVE Arts, Wevr created an immersive experience and story with historical accuracy. This partnership was essential — we weren't just creating an entertaining experience, or expanding opportunities to see an historic archaeological site. We were honoring one of China's most treasured cultural sites with historical precision down to every detail.
"We were entrusted with the responsibility to convey details in a historically accurate way, but also to bring Wevr's immersive storytelling capabilities and sensibilities to the audience", explains Neville Spiteri. The challenge was immediate and complex: how do you create a compelling adventure that honors archaeological precision while delivering the transportive magic that VR promises?
The experience allows people to explore previously unseen areas of Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum, transporting viewers back in time to allow them to feel a part of the Mausoleum during its most significant moment — the eve of the emperor's burial. And it allows visitors to do this alongside friends and family, up to 150 people at a time, so the experience is that of being fully transported in time, and experiencing it together.
The Creative Challenge: History Meets Hollywood
The answer to balancing historical accuracy with compelling storytelling lay in understanding what makes VR unique as a medium. Unlike film or traditional gaming, VR puts you there — walking through spaces, experiencing scale, feeling the presence of ancient history around you. Our creative director Luis Blackaller notes, "The magic clicks when you are able to create a meaningful relationship between story, interactivity, and space so that the group of people that are together in that space are able to experience that space and the interactions that are provided to them to navigate through that story by becoming a part of it."
In partnership with VIVE Arts and Xi'an-based immersive experience company Horizon Technology, we created "Terracotta Warriors: Secrets of the First Emperor's Mausoleum" next to Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum Site Museum in Shaanxi province. This groundbreaking 40-minute experience transports visitors inside the emperor's mausoleum on its final night—mere hours before it was sealed for what was intended to be eternity.
Technical Innovation at Scale
Our technical ambitions were as bold as our creative vision. Led by Wevr CTO Marcel Samek, we built an entirely new infrastructure that enables groups to experience this immersive journey together in real-time. Transforming individual VR into a synchronized, shared adventure. It’s essentially a theme park experience running on cutting-edge VR technology. Picture this: three stages, each over 2,000 square feet, with 150 people per hour flowing through a 40-minute immersive journey, all wearing VIVE Focus Vision headsets and moving together through shared virtual space.
"It's like building a theme park ride with a fraction of the budget," Spiteri reflects. "You have to worry about safety boundaries and smooth guest flow, achieving high throughput, WiFi coordination for 100+ headsets — all while maintaining the magic and ensuring historical accuracy down to every millimeter."
Built entirely in Unreal Engine and running on standalone mobile VR hardware, the experience pushes the boundaries of what's possible in location-based entertainment. Every element, from the massive nine-story towers to the intricate details of bronze chariots with exquisitely crafted golden and lacquer incrustations, is rendered to historically accurate dimensions based on extensive research provided by experts. Visitors can see human-scale references throughout, giving them a genuine sense of the mausoleum's magnificent proportions.
Wevr produced this ambitious project across multiple time zones with an amazing team. While the challenges were vast working with multiple teams, languages and different cultural nuances, we were able to pull it off. To name a few people from the team that worked tirelessly to ship this production - Peter Ariet, Line Producer, coordinated teams in LA, Atlanta, Malta, UK, Taipei and Xi’an, and Wevr expanded its production team by enlisting Atlanta-based interactive developer MotR, led by Jack Ehrbar and Andrew Weidenhammer.
The Power of Presence, Agency, and Storytelling
What we discovered through extensive user testing reinforces why we're passionate about this medium. The art of creating an immersive experience relies on nuanced storytelling techniques that are unique to this medium. It's counterintuitive to filmmakers, but using the power of presence, agency, and interactive features allows visitors to be transported ever deeper in the world than any other medium. For forty-plus minutes, you and your friends are in ancient China in the mausoleum witnessing firsthand history.
VR's superpower isn't just visual — it's the sense of being there. As Luis explains, "It's not something that you're going to be able to fix later in the editing room. It happens live, and what the people are gonna do as participants, you can assume as much as possible, but you don't entirely know."
This led to one of our key creative learnings: less narration, more experience. "The instinct is maybe to overwrite, or to over explain," notes Spiteri. "Some of the stronger moments are more experiential, driven by the music and your experience." When visitors naturally step forward to examine a terracotta warrior's unique facial features or peer over the edge of an ancient platform, that physical agency becomes part of the storytelling.
The experience unfolds in two acts: first, a tomb exploration adventure complete with ancient traps (no spoilers here!), guided by an archaeologist companion from the future. The second half transforms into something more magical — a realm where archaeological artifacts come to life, terracotta warriors march in formation, and visitors witness the workshops where these eternal guardians were created.
Bridging Past and Future
What makes this project particularly meaningful is its location and expected impact. Launched on July 29th in Xi'an, "Terracotta Warriors: Secrets of the First Emperor's Mausoleum" runs next to the actual mausoleum site and soon also in downtown Xi'an's cultural entertainment district. With millions of visitors expected to immerse themselves into history through this groundbreaking experience, we're not just creating entertainment — we're expanding access to one of humanity's greatest archaeological treasures.
This isn't just about technology — it's about cultural preservation and accessibility. The physical mausoleum remains sealed out of respect for the emperor and to protect whatever mysteries lie within. Our VR experience offers something impossible in the physical world: the chance to step inside previously unseen areas, and to virtually witness as it unfolded.
"The wish fulfillment is that you are literally there on the eve of the burial of the first emperor of China," explains Spiteri, “the beginning of a legacy that lasts to this day”.
Lessons for the Future of Immersive Experiences
Every ambitious project teaches you something new about the medium, and this one reinforced several crucial insights. First, the importance of moving user testing "to the left" in production — getting people into rough experiences as early as possible to understand how they naturally move and react. Second, the delicate balance between agency and narrative in shared experiences where throughput matters. And third, the reminder that we're still in the early days of standardizing location based virtual reality (LBEVR) as a format.
"Every time somebody comes with a creative idea, you have to kind of revisit all your assumptions," Luis observes. "It's like if you were making movies and you had to change the actual shape of the screen and the way people would be looking at it every time you make a new one."
But that's also what makes this work exciting. We're not just creating entertainment — we're helping define what immersive storytelling will become.
A Window Into Tomorrow's Museums
Looking ahead, we see enormous potential for cultural institutions worldwide. Museums have precious artifacts and rich historical stories that must be kept safe and secure. VR offers two transformative possibilities: providing access that would otherwise be impossible, and transporting visitors through space and time to experience artifacts in their original context.
"It could be so much more," Luis reflects on current museum technology. "Museums have all these new media installations already, but they are, for the most part, fairly passive and illustrative, and we haven’t even talked about remote access yet. It could be so much more."
Imagine walking through ancient Rome at its peak, standing in Shakespeare's Globe Theatre during an original performance, or witnessing the construction of the pyramids. The technology exists today; what's needed is the vision and commitment to bring these experiences to life.
The Emperor's Digital Legacy
Following the opening in Xi’an, as we prepare for the international launch of "Terracotta Warriors: Secrets of the First Emperor's Mausoleum," we are struck by the continuity of human ambition across millennia. Emperor Qin Shi Huang unified China, standardized currency and writing, and built monuments intended to last forever. Now, 2,200 years later, we're using the most advanced technology of our time to ensure his story continues reaching new generations.
With millions of visitors expected to experience this 40-minute journey through time, many will be experiencing VR for the first time, all gaining a deeper connection to one of history's most remarkable civilizations. That's not just entertainment; that's cultural preservation and education at unprecedented scale.
The emperor built his mausoleum to achieve immortality. Through virtual reality, and the collaborative efforts of Wevr, VIVE Arts, and the dedicated experts in Xi'an, he just might have succeeded.
"Terracotta Warriors: Secrets of the First Emperor's Mausoleum" opens July 29th, 2025, in Xi'an, China. The experience represents a collaboration between Wevr, VIVE Arts, and Xi'an-based immersive experience company Horizon Technology.