From Tears to Smiles: AR Adventure Calms Children Before Surgery

Quick Video About the Project

Customer

At Lismore Base Hospital, Australia, there is a pediatric doctor with a big heart and a strong mission to help children feel safe and calm before surgery. For years, he has been coming up with creative ways to ease their fears. He and his colleagues have decorated hospital beds with pirate flags and given children funny hats. Sometimes, they’ve even put astronaut helmets on fearful kids so they wouldn’t see needles. Anything to turn tears into smiles.

One day, the doctor imagined something new. What if children could go on a joyful, magical adventure while being wheeled to the operating room? What if, instead of a cold hospital corridor, they could see a world of pirates, dolphins, and tropical islands, while still seeing their parents nearby for comfort? That idea became the starting point of a collaboration with Hymux Technologies.

Outcome

The Hymux Technologies team created an Augmented Reality (AR) application that transforms a child’s trip to the operating room into an exciting pirate adventure. Children wear an Oculus Quest 3 headset, and as they move through the hospital, they “sail” on a pirate ship surrounded by animated sea creatures, cheerful sounds, and a friendly parrot offering words of encouragement.

The experience helps distract young patients, reduces anxiety, and supports doctors and parents in creating a calmer atmosphere before surgery.

Solution

The project was originally designed for Apple Vision Pro because these glasses could measure distance in meters, which helped synchronize the content with the child’s movement through the hospital. But later, the customer decided to switch to Oculus Quest 3, so the Hymux Technologies team had to rethink the entire approach.

The new device also supported Augmented Reality and hand tracking, so the child using it did not need to hold a controller to interact with the content. However, the system lacked distance tracking, which meant the Hymux Technologies team had to find a new way to make the story progress naturally regardless of how long the trip to the operating room took.

To address this, the developers used virtual anchors, a feature of the Meta SDK. Anchors are invisible points that can be placed in real space and linked to the scanned environment. This made it possible to attach digital scenes to specific parts of the hospital route.

To make setup convenient for medical staff, the application was designed with two modes:

• Setup Mode – used by doctors or assistants to prepare the experience. They can scan the environment, place virtual anchors (shown as small fish for clarity), and assign animations to each one. For example, one anchor can trigger a butterfly, another a dolphin, and another a monkey. Anchors can be grouped by location and adjusted at any time.
• Play Mode – the mode used by children. Once anchors are set, the app runs automatically without a controller. The child simply enjoys the story, steering the pirate ship, watching sea animals, and listening to the talking parrot.

This design makes the app flexible and easy to reuse. Hospitals can change routes or even use it in a different building without losing the setup.

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Challenges

The main challenge came from adapting the concept for Oculus Quest 3, which does not track distance. The team needed a way to display animations in the right order without relying on time or meters traveled. Virtual anchors solved this but required careful setup to ensure they stayed stable even when lighting or surroundings changed.

Another major challenge was optimizing the cave scene, which was designed for the elevator ride. This is a fully immersive Virtual Reality segment with detailed 3D graphics that had to perform smoothly without lag. The team spent time optimizing assets, animations, and lighting to achieve stable performance.

Despite these challenges, the final experience works seamlessly and delivers a calm, engaging journey for every child who tries it.

Team

• 1 project manager
• 1 Unity developer
• 1 QA engineer

Our team worked closely with the doctor, holding regular calls and testing each stage of development. Despite changing requirements and complex technology, the project’s purpose kept the team motivated.

To better understand how this AR experience came to life, we spoke with the project manager and Unity developer. In this short interview, they share insights into the challenges, technical decisions, and what it took to build a calm, child-friendly AR journey inside a real hospital environment.

Learn more about Hymux Technologies’s VR/AR development services and see how we can create engaging, interactive solutions for healthcare, education, and beyond.