The World's Largest Alamo Diorama. Now Alive In Your Hands.

The centerpiece of the Dallas Historical Society’s Texas Independence Exhibit is one of the most extraordinary artifacts in any Texas museum: a 24×14-foot, 336-square-foot diorama of the Battle of the Alamo, created over more than 20 years by Pennsylvania artist Thomas Feely. It features over 2,000 hand-painted pewter figures at 1/54 scale. It’s the largest depiction of the Battle of the Alamo ever created.

Despite the diorama’s beauty and scale Karl Ciao, Executive Director of the Dallas Historical Society, recognized it offers no interactive elements for the 20,000-plus students who visit the Hall of State each year. Visitors enter the South Texas Room, walk around the perimeter, take in the scene, and then move on. Without a guide to explain what they’re looking at, students gain little from the experience.

QuantumERA was brought in as a technology partner to change that. But the solution would have to work within difficult constraints: the Hall of State is a registered historical landmark, prohibiting any modification to the building’s structure. The exhibit room’s tall ceilings, large windows on every wall, and prominent back mural made it impossible to install projection mapping, lighting rigs, or sound systems. And the sheer scale of the diorama ruled out the image-targeting approach QuantumERA had used in prior projects.

QuantumERA’s answer was a mixed reality companion app that uses the diorama itself as the trigger and the visitor’s device as the window into the battle.

Rather than relying on image targets, the team pioneered an area targeting approach: capturing detailed 3D scans of the diorama to build a spatial map of the area. This allowed the app to precisely anchor AR content to specific physical locations on the diorama. This solution required no markers, no QR codes, no modifications to the landmark building.

The Battle of the Alamo Experience

The app’s main feature is a fully realized 3D model of the 1836 Alamo Mission historically accurate, modeled to match the physical diorama in exact detail, down to each soldier’s rank, uniform, and position. Visitors scan the physical diorama with their device camera to trigger the experience, then explore 6 locations across the battlefield, each marked by a maroon flag. At every flag, visitors rotate their camera freely in all directions to discover interactive artifacts, meet key figures, and watch fully animated battle sequences play out in mixed reality directly on top of the physical diorama beneath them.

Alamo 360

360° photography captured during multiple on-site visits to the Hall of State was edited into high-quality panoramas at each of the app’s key locations. A top-view map of the Alamo displays all points of interest. Visitors tap any icon to be transported to that position as if standing on the diorama itself, experiencing the battle from the ground level of the 1836 mission.

Meet the Characters

The app brings six key figures of the Battle of the Alamo to life as fully animated 3D characters: David Crockett, Jim Bowie, William Barret Travis, Santa Anna, a cannon crew, and Sarah, the African American woman who died in the battle and had been nearly lost to history. Visitors place any figure in their physical space and watch the character come to life in their real environment.

Artifact Interaction

QuantumERA worked directly with Dallas Historical Society staff to identify six artifacts from the DHS collection best suited to deepen the historical narrative. Each was modeled in 3D and made interactive to give visitors a hands-on connection to objects that typically sit behind glass.

The production required extraordinary precision at every stage. QuantumERA conducted numerous on-site visits to the Hall of State, capturing thousands of reference photographs of the space, the diorama, each soldier, and every prop. These references were used by animation partner MoontowerVFX to build historically accurate 3D models of the buildings, soldiers, animals, and landscape.

Our creative director worked in parallel with historians and the animation team to develop scripts, animatics, and finished animations, ensuring that every soldier’s position in the AR experience matched the corresponding figure on the physical diorama below. Voice-over actors, sound design, and music beds were selected collaboratively with the DHS team.

One of the most meaningful decisions made during production was the inclusion of Sarah, an African American woman, who perished in the battle and had been overlooked in most historical accounts of the Alamo. Bringing her story forward in the app’s featured character roster was a deliberate act of historical restoration.

Area Targeting

3D spatial scanning of the room and diorama enables precise AR anchoring without image markers or building modifications

6 Battle Locations

Maroon flag markers across the diorama guide visitors through the complete arc of the siege

Fully Animated 3D Battle Sequences

Historically accurate soldiers, commanders, and action rendered in mixed reality on top of the physical diorama

Alamo 360 Panoramas

Tap any point of interest on the overhead map to be transported there in a full 360° view

Six Animated Characters

David Crockett, Jim Bowie, William Barret Travis, Santa Anna, cannon crew, and Sarah

Artifact Interaction

Six DHS collection artifacts modeled in 3D and made interactive within the experience

No Building Modification Required

Engineered entirely around the landmark building’s constraints via mobile AR

Free on iOS & Android

Available to all Hall of State visitors at no cost

“This app is an immersive storytelling tool that provides a comprehensive play-by-play of one of the most revolutionary sieges in American history.”

Texas Liberty Forever! opened to the public on March 29, 2022 at the Hall of State and the companion app debuted alongside it. Over the year, more than 160,000 Hall of State visitors and 20,000-plus student groups experienced an entirely new way to encounter the diorama.