València City Council | Immersive Solar Eclipse Installation with Virtual Reality and AI

TECHNOLOGY

IMMERSIVE TECH

USE CASE

TRAINING

CLIENT

València Innovation Capital, the innovation strategy of the València City Council, launched an outreach installation at Las Naves to mark the total solar eclipse of 12 August 2026, visible from the city for the first time in over a century. The brief called for bringing an exceptional astronomical event closer to the public, with particular attention to children and young people, blending scientific rigour with a memorable and completely safe experience.

GOAL ACHIEVED

To explain clearly and engagingly how and why a total eclipse occurs, to recover the memory of the historic 1905 eclipse in the Comunitat Valenciana, and to ensure the public could experience the phenomenon with zero risk to their eyesight.

A public installation explaining an eclipse that hadn't repeated in a century

From 20 July to 31 August 2026, the Las Naves Exhibition Hall in València hosted an outreach installation marking the total solar eclipse of 12 August, visible from the city for the first time in over a century. The València City Council commissioned DeuSens to design an immersive experience able to translate this complex astronomical phenomenon into a journey accessible to any visitor, from children to adults with no prior scientific background. The challenge wasn't purely educational: it also meant finding a way to talk about an eclipse without inviting anyone to look directly at the sun.

DeuSens proposed a single journey combining historical context, scientific understanding and a memorable experience, resolving the visual risk through the very nature of the concept: living the eclipse from within, indoors, rather than watching it in the sky.

Virtual reality to travel into space and understand the eclipse

At the heart of the experience was a virtual reality journey that took visitors beyond Earth to observe, from a perspective impossible to witness with the naked eye, how the Sun, Moon and Earth align during a total eclipse. The sequence recreated the hardest moments of a real eclipse to witness — the instant the Moon fully covers the solar disk, the glow of the corona, the flash of the diamond ring, and the flicker of the last beads of light before totality.

The narrative was designed for a broad audience: clear narration, a measured pace and an intensity suited to younger visitors too. The journey was experienced through PICO 4 headsets, with enough autonomy to cover a full day of opening hours. Rather than simply showing the eclipse, the experience made it felt, using technology to deliver what no visitor could safely or accurately observe from the València sky itself.

An AI-generated portrait turning visitors into protagonists

The second piece of the journey featured a FunMirror station, our generative AI solution, that turned every visitor into a character from the eclipse's own story: an early-20th-century scientific expedition brought back to life through their own image. From a photo taken on the spot, the installation generated a commemorative portrait visitors could take home as a digital keepsake of their visit.

The design of this piece symbolically recovered the spirit of the astronomical expeditions that travelled to the Comunitat Valenciana to witness the 1905 eclipse. Turning the public into part of that story — rather than mere spectators — reinforced the installation's central idea: completing, over a century later, what that generation couldn't quite finish seeing.

Scientific outreach, safety and accessibility for every audience

The whole experience was grounded in rigorous content, cross-checked against official astronomical sources, to explain precisely what happens during an eclipse, why the Comunitat Valenciana became a world reference for astronomy in 1905, and how the phenomenon connects to modern science. Eye safety was woven throughout the installation as a constant message, with clear guidance on how to observe the real event without risking eyesight.

The journey was designed to run autonomously throughout the entire opening period, supported by educational materials and sessions aimed at schools and organised groups over the summer. The result was an experience designed to accompany the people of València through a once-in-a-lifetime historical event, with technology as a bridge to scientific curiosity.