As cool as Toyota’s Prius is, it’s even cooler with slick 3-D animation, as JUXT Interactive, HUSH and PUSH proved with this interactive installation at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show. It’s rare that installations offer great interaction and great content; this one does both and the design and animation are a great payoff to the game play.

The three-screen multi-touch display is human scale and presents a trio of hyperreal animated environments, smaller pop-up windows that tout various features, custom QR codes that visitors can photograph and use elsewhere, windows to contact local Toyota dealers and, maybe most importantly, activities for children. The trio of panels works in tandem or distinctly, rotating in slot machine style so that the front, middle and rear sections of the car appear to be simultaneously positioned in alternate environments. The playful, informative, life-size triptych experience stood out as one of the most compelling, and fun, installations of the show.