The Setting
Kampung Annah Rais sits deep in the Sarawak jungle, home to one of the last standing traditional Bidayuh longhouses. On 1 and 2 June 2026, the village hosted its Gawai celebration, drawing more than 9,000 visitors over two days for open house traditions, cultural performances, and a community bazaar, supported by Coca-Cola Malaysia and led by community head Tn Joda Mamung.
Most of our work happens at conventions, malls, and corporate activations. This one happened somewhere you can only reach by travelling into the jungle, inside a longhouse that has stood for generations.
What We Built
At the centre of the celebration stood the Monument of Cokennection, a large Coca-Cola bottle installation decorated with Bidayuh motifs and paddy contributed by the community itself. We built a WebAR experience triggered by that monument: point a phone camera at it, and animated Bidayuh dancers in traditional dress appear on the longhouse, performing as captions tell the story of the community in both English and Bahasa Malaysia.
It's delivered as WebAR, the same approach we use for WarisanXR and our other public activations: no app to download, just a browser and a camera. For a crowd that included many people trying AR for the very first time, that mattered more here than anywhere else we've deployed it.
The view through the camera: history, animated and bilingual
Why This One Was Different
Our founder, Justin Wong, was on the ground for it. In his words:
"We usually deploy XR for corporate events and city crowds. This was different. Watching many of the participants encountering AR for the first time, experiencing the history of the Bidayuh community brought to life inside one of Sarawak's last standing longhouses."
Justin Wong, Founder, TrueXRTechnology built for a jungle longhouse has different constraints than technology built for a mall activation, but the harder shift is the one in purpose. This wasn't about foot traffic or dwell time. It was about a community's own history, told back to its own visitors, on the land where it happened.
Where This Fits
Technology doesn't have to live only in cities. Some of the most powerful experiences happen when you bring it to where the stories actually are, not the other way around. That's as true for a 5G showcase at a university as it is for a longhouse in Sarawak. The delivery changes with the context. The job stays the same: build the right technology for the story that's actually there, and get it out of the way so people can feel it.
The Kampung Annah Rais community closed the celebration with a Bidayuh blessing that feels like the right way to close this one too: Gayu Guru Gerai Nyamai, may you live long, healthy, and in peace.
- WebAR removes the barrier that matters most in a first-time audience. No app download meant no barrier between a visitor trying AR for the first time and the story itself.
- The monument was the trigger, not the content. A physical, community-built installation anchored a digital experience rather than replacing it.
- The best use case isn't always the urban one. The same WebAR approach we use for city activations found its most meaningful application inside a longhouse.
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