Discovery World at Pier Wisconsin on our beautiful lakefront is home to a pretty cool new exhibit, the Hive.

It's a responsive pod of projection screens that holds a maximum of six people. The screens fill three walls and the floor, giving you the experience of total immersion.

Recently, I sampled three of the Hive's various environments: outer space, a village in Portugal and a simulated dance with some robot dude. There's also airplane and various flight and walking tour simulations.

All provided an amazing 3D experience, since the environments respond to your actions. It's simple to use, too. Just walk up, put on the glasses, slip on some booties (they project the screen that you stand on) and step inside.

As you look around, you feel like you're in an IMAX movie or better yet an incredibly realistic video game. You can't really run around in the Hive as it's rather small, but within your 15-minute session you can explore and imagine. It's pretty cool.

The Hive was developed with Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) and serves as a teaching tool for them, as well. MATC students are building other environments for the Hive. We hear a virtual tour of Milwaukee is on tap.

It's hard to fully describe the Hive, so I suggest you go check it out soon.