01Air & Space
A connected family of virtual exhibitions that turns a landmark museum into an explorable digital destination.
XR · Multimodal AI · Instructional design
Museums you can enter from anywhere.
Loren Ybarrondo combines immersive imaging, extended reality, modern AI, and instructional design to turn museums, historic places, and public collections into learning experiences people can enter—not simply view.
Featured experienceSteven F. Udvar-Hazy CenterView case study
20+years creating immersive experiences
AI + XRone production system for modern learning
Accessbuilt in from the beginning
Trusted with places of national significance
Smithsonian InstitutionNational Museum of the U.S. Air ForceThe Metropolitan Museum of ArtSupreme Court of the United States
Public value / future learning
Public investment should keep teaching.
Museums and public agencies commission ambitious digital work, often at substantial cost. Fiscal years end, programs change, and hosting disappears—but the educational value does not. Important work should remain usable, searchable, and available to the public that paid for it.
Modern multimodal AI changes the production equation. A small, expert team can turn well-sourced material into narration, accessible transcripts, visual interpretation, teacher resources, translations, and new learning paths—then update them as knowledge and standards evolve.
Enter the working learning systemEnter the place+Hear the story+Practice discovery+Measure learning
A connected museum without walls
One air and space story, across institutions.
Loren is integrating independently hosted aviation experiences so visitors can follow an object, event, or technology across the Smithsonian and the National Museum of the United States Air Force as one continuous digital journey.
Smithsonian · Udvar-HazyEnola GaySpace Shuttle DiscoveryFollow the story↔Cross-museum pathways in development
National Museum of the U.S. Air ForceBockscarShuttle crew compartment trainerExample journey: compare the aircraft central to the atomic missions over Japan, then move from an exterior view of Discovery directly into a shuttle trainer—without leaving the experience.
The next visitor economy
Immersive media becomes useful when it helps people go somewhere.
Modern 360° cameras can document an entire place and create reframed video for social publishing from the same capture. Loren’s tourism prototypes take the next step: connecting that imagery to maps, history, audio, businesses, and an actual visit—from an entire state to a world museum or a desert landscape.
Statewide immersive tourism
Virtual West Virginia
More than 170 views, a custom state map, destination icons, Google Business Profile and Street View connections, planned 3D mapping, and location-aware audio storytelling.
Audio-first cultural discovery
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
More than 125 after-hours gallery views reorganized as short, voice-led modules and thematic paths through 5,000 years of art—designed for exploration at home or before a visit.
Landscape and destination discovery
Deserts
Panoramic routes through the Mojave, Joshua Tree, Valley of Fire, Red Rock Canyon, and Borrego Springs—connecting dramatic imagery to place, geology, history, and future travel.
Explore in 360°→Hear the place→Build a route→Visit in person
Selected work / 01—15
The best virtual experiences make you feel present.
Each project starts with the place and the story—not a template. The result is a custom digital experience with its own rhythm, interface, and reason to keep exploring.
0102Udvar-Hazy
An expansive, accessible tour that makes one of the world’s largest aviation collections navigable from any screen.
03No Arena
A bold, media-rich virtual exhibition about organizing, memory, and the fight to protect Philadelphia’s Chinatown.
04Sightlines
A layered virtual visit connecting art, neighborhood history, oral storytelling, and the changing life of Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown.
05How Can You Forget Me?
An elegant, story-first virtual tour where archival material, family memory, and exhibition space work as one experience.
06Natural History
A long-running virtual museum platform that brings natural history galleries, exhibitions, and learning resources to remote visitors.
07Preservation and integration in progress
National Museum of the U.S. Air Force
A resurrected multi-gallery experience becoming the connective tissue for a unified digital air and space museum.
08Independent portfolio archive
TSA Mission Hall
A headquarters experience connecting TSA’s formation, people, uniforms, technology, milestones, and public-service mission.
09Independent portfolio archive
Vietnam War 50th Commemoration
A chronological virtual exhibition carrying the Vietnam War’s history, service, sacrifice, artifacts, and remembrance into an immersive format.
10Independent portfolio archive
Military Women’s Memorial
An immersive record of the memorial, its galleries, service histories, Hall of Honor, architecture, and national register.
11Future tourism platform · in redevelopment
Virtual West Virginia
A statewide immersive-tourism prototype connecting destinations, parks, local businesses, history, AI audio, and Google-based wayfinding.
12Independent portfolio prototype · audio edition in development
The Met
After-hours panoramic photography reimagined as a room-by-room, audio-led journey through 5,000 years of art and architecture.
13Independent landscape archive · tourism edition planned
Deserts
A panoramic journey through desert parks, geology, roads, sculpture, and changing light across the American West.
14Independent demonstration · continued development
3D Sculpture Explorer
A photorealistic 3D collection that lets visitors move around monuments, memorials, and museum objects as dimensional places.
15Portfolio archive · redesign planned
Deep Reef Expedition
A mission-based K–12 experience that sends students beneath the surface to investigate deep reefs, invasive lionfish, and Smithsonian research.
Archive / next redesignA foundation worth renewing
The Supreme Court, ready for its next chapter.
Commissioned in 2018 and viewed by millions, the original experience opened the Court’s marble interiors to the public. The next step is an elegant, accessible redesign informed by the restrained storytelling system created for How Can You Forget Me?
Preservation as public service
Public work should stay public.
Several experiences in this portfolio were originally commissioned and publicly funded, then retired or left unsupported when programs and budgets changed. Loren preserves them independently as portfolio archives, public-history resources, and foundations for new educational work.
Each project is identified by its current status. Institutional names and marks document the original commission; they do not imply current sponsorship of this independent archive.
A complete practice / not just a camera
From first walkthrough to the moment a visitor presses enter.
- 01
Find the story
Shape the visitor journey, content priorities, and measures of success before choosing the technology.
- 02
Capture the place
Photograph the environment with the resolution, viewpoints, and visual consistency the final experience needs.
- 03
Design the visit
Create a custom interface, navigation model, and media system that feel native to the institution and exhibition.
- 04
Build for everyone
Engineer responsive, accessible experiences and instrument them to show what visitors explore and where they engage.
Capabilities
Immersive production
360° photography, panoramic processing, image optimization, and virtual-tour assembly.
Experience design
Visitor journeys, interaction systems, visual direction, responsive UI, and exhibition storytelling.
AI learning production
Source-grounded scripts, voice-led interpretation, transcripts, translations, teacher resources, and modular learning paths.
Access and insight
Accessible companion modes, reduced-motion controls, analytics, SEO, and long-term maintainability.
Engineer / photographer / experience makerAbout Loren
Technical enough to build it. Curious enough to make it matter.
I’m a systems engineer with a master’s degree from Georgia Tech, and I’ve spent more than two decades creating immersive experiences for museums, historic places, industrial facilities, and educational organizations. My work sits between instructional design, photography, engineering, and digital storytelling.
Before founding this practice, I worked in early distance learning and served as a U.S. Navy technical program manager. Today I serve on the Board of Directors of the International Virtual Reality Professionals Association as Director of Education, advancing the use of XR for learning.
I began in CAD, moved through animation and game production, then web and immersive media. The tools keep changing. The purpose does not: put the power of story, exploration, and creation into more people’s hands.