Blue Whales AR was developed as a companion experience to HHMI Tangled Bank Studio’s IMAX documentary, Blue Whales, extending the film’s impact beyond the cinema into classrooms, homes, and museums.
While the documentary introduces audiences to the lives of blue whales on the largest screens in the world, the AR app offers a more personal, exploratory encounter. Commissioned by the California Science Center, the project formed part of a broader educational initiative to translate cinematic storytelling into interactive learning. Habitat XR was tasked with creating an experience that could stand alone as a learning tool while reinforcing the themes of scale, biology, and conservation introduced in the IMAX film.
Blue whales are the largest animals to have ever existed, yet their immense size and deep-ocean habitat make them almost impossible to experience firsthand. For most people, understanding these animals is limited to diagrams, photographs, or short video clips that struggle to convey true scale or complexity.
Educators and science institutions face the challenge of turning awe into understanding. There was a need for an experience that could move beyond observation, allowing learners to actively explore blue whale anatomy, behaviour, and evolution in a way that felt tangible, memorable, and accessible to students of all ages.
This app brings people closer to the largest animal to have ever lived through two chapters. The first, "Model View", allows you to place a blue whale in your own home or school and explore its unique traits and biology (including its skeleton and organs, as well as the ability to blow it up to life size!)
The second is a submarine VR experience which allows people to follow a virtual blue whale and observe incredible behaviours at will as well as compare its size to other familiar species and objects.
Since launch, the app has been downloaded by thousands of schoolchildren and schools across North America, extending the reach of the Blue Whales documentary into formal and informal learning environments.
By bringing a life-scale whale into classrooms and homes, the experience helps learners grasp size, biology, and behaviour in ways that traditional teaching tools cannot.
Teachers and students use the app as a hands-on educational resource, supporting curriculum-aligned learning in biology, evolution, and environmental science. As a companion to the IMAX film, the AR experience reinforces long-term engagement with marine science, encouraging curiosity, discussion, and deeper appreciation for ocean life and conservation.
“Created for educators in all environments — from the classroom to the library to the home – these resources include videos, activities, and interactives that explore the stunning biology of the blue whale paired with local, hands-on opportunities to engage with nature in less exotic locales.”
