Introducing Digitized Cultural Heritage to Wider Audiences by Employing Virtual and Augmented Reality Experiences: The Case of the v-Corfu Project

Vasileios Komianos; Athanasios Tsipis; Katerina Kontopanagou

doi:10.3390/technologies12100196

journal article Open Access Oct 13, 2024

Introducing Digitized Cultural Heritage to Wider Audiences by Employing Virtual and Augmented Reality Experiences: The Case of the v-Corfu Project

Vasileios Komianos

Athanasios Tsipis

Katerina Kontopanagou

Technologies Vol. 12 No. 10 pp. 196 · MDPI AG

View at Publisher Save 10.3390/technologies12100196

Abstract

In recent years, cultural projects utilizing digital applications and immersive technologies (VR, AR, MR) have grown significantly, enhancing cultural heritage experiences. Research emphasizes the importance of usability, user experience, and accessibility, yet holistic approaches remain underexplored and many projects fail to reach their audience. This article aims to bridge this gap by presenting a complete workflow including systematic requirements analysis, design guidelines, and development solutions based on knowledge extracted from previous relevant projects. The article focuses on virtual museums covering key challenges including compatibility, accessibility, usability, navigation, interaction, computational performance and graphics quality, and provides a design schema for integrating virtual museums into such projects. Following this approach, a number of applications are presented. Their performance with respect to the aforementioned key challenges is evaluated. Users are invited to assess them, providing positive results. To assess the virtual museum’s ability to attract a broader audience beyond the usual target group, a group of underserved minorities are also invited to use and evaluate it, generating encouraging outcomes. Concluding, results show that the presented workflow succeeds in yielding high-quality applications for cultural heritage communication and attraction of wider audiences, and outlines directions for further improvements in digitized heritage applications.

Topics

No keywords indexed for this article. Browse by subject →

References

71

[1]

Navarrete, T. (2013). Digital cultural heritage. Handbook on the Economics of Cultural Heritage, Edward Elgar Publishing. 10.4337/9780857931009.00023

[2]

Economou, M. (2015). Heritage in the digital age. A Companion to Heritage Studies, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 10.1002/9781118486634.ch15

[3]

A framework study on the use of immersive XR technologies in the cultural heritage domain

Chiara Innocente, Luca Ulrich, Sandro Moos et al.

Journal of Cultural Heritage 2023 10.1016/j.culher.2023.06.001

[4]

Foni "A taxonomy of visualization strategies for cultural heritage applications" J. Comput. Cult. Herit. (JOCCH) (2010) 10.1145/1805961.1805962

[5]

Beer, S. (2015, January 8–10). Virtual museums: An innovative kind of museum survey. Proceedings of the 2015 Virtual Reality International Conference, Laval, France. 10.1145/2806173.2806191

[6]

Styliani "Virtual museums, a survey and some issues for consideration" J. Cult. Herit. (2009) 10.1016/j.culher.2009.03.003

[7]

Konstantakis "Adding culture to UX: UX research methodologies and applications in cultural heritage" J. Comput. Cult. Herit. (JOCCH) (2020) 10.1145/3354002

[8]

Kabassi, K., Amelio, A., Komianos, V., and Oikonomou, K. (2019). Evaluating museum virtual tours: The case study of Italy. Information, 10. 10.3390/info10110351

[9]

Demetrescu "Digital replica of cultural landscapes: An experimental reality-based workflow to create realistic, interactive open world experiences" J. Cult. Herit. (2020) 10.1016/j.culher.2019.07.018

[10]

Komianos, V., Kavvadia, E., and Oikonomou, K. (2014, January 7–9). Efficient and realistic cultural heritage representation in large scale virtual environments. Proceedings of the IISA 2014, The 5th International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications, Chania, Greece. 10.1109/iisa.2014.6878758

[11]

Komianos "Immersive applications in museums: An analysis of the use of xr technologies and the provided functionality based on systematic literature review" JOIV Int. J. Inform. Vis. (2022)

[12]

Silva, M., and Teixeira, L. (2021, January 3–4). eXtended Reality (XR) experiences in museums for cultural heritage: A systematic review. Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment, Virtual Event. 10.1007/978-3-030-99188-3_5

[13]

Ferretti "A comprehensive HBIM to XR framework for museum management and user experience in ducal palace at urbino" Heritage (2022) 10.3390/heritage5030081

[14]

Augmented Reality in Cultural Heritage: An Overview of the Last Decade of Applications

Răzvan Gabriel Boboc, Elena Băutu, Florin Gîrbacia et al.

Applied Sciences 10.3390/app12199859

[15]

Galatis, P., Gavalas, D., Kasapakis, V., Pantziou, G.E., and Zaroliagis, C.D. (December, January 30). Mobile Augmented Reality Guides in Cultural Heritage. Proceedings of the MobiCASE 2016, Cambridge, UK. 10.4108/eai.30-11-2016.2266954

[16]

Kontopanagou, K., Tsipis, A., and Komianos, V. (2021). A framework for exploring churches/monuments/museums of byzantine cultural influence exploiting immersive technologies in real-time networked environments. Technologies, 9. 10.3390/technologies9030057

[17]

De Bonis, M., Nguyen, H., and Bourdot, P. (2022, January 17–21). A Literature Review of User Studies in Extended Reality Applications for Archaeology. Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), Singapore. 10.1109/ismar55827.2022.00023

[18]

Lepouras "Virtual museums for all: Employing game technology for edutainment" Virtual Real. (2004) 10.1007/s10055-004-0141-1

[19]

Smith "Using 3D modelling and game engine technologies for interactive exploration of cultural heritage: An evaluation of four game engines in relation to roman archaeological heritage" Digit. Appl. Archaeol. Cult. Herit. (2019)

[20]

Michaelis, N., Jung, Y., and Behr, J. (2012, January 4–5). Virtual heritage to go. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on 3D Web Technology, Los Angeles, CA, USA. 10.1145/2338714.2338733

[21]

Komianos "A framework for cultural heritage content organisation, dissemination and communication in large-scale virtual environments" Int. J. Comput. Intell. Stud. (2016)

[22]

Mott, M., Cutrell, E., Franco, M.G., Holz, C., Ofek, E., Stoakley, R., and Morris, M.R. (2019, January 10–18). Accessible by design: An opportunity for virtual reality. Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct), Beijing, China. 10.1109/ismar-adjunct.2019.00122

[23]

Gorisse, G., Christmann, O., Amato, E.A., and Richir, S. (2017). First-and third-person perspectives in immersive virtual environments: Presence and performance analysis of embodied users. Front. Robot. AI, 4. 10.3389/frobt.2017.00033

[24]

Salamin, P., Thalmann, D., and Vexo, F. (2006, January 1–3). The benefits of third-person perspective in virtual and augmented reality?. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, Limassol, Cyprus. 10.1145/1180495.1180502

[25]

Tsavalou, D., and Komianos, V. (2021, January 28–29). First Steps Towards Speech Controlled Navigation in Web Virtual Reality Environments. Proceedings of the DCAC 2021: 3rd International Conference on Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges, Interdisciplinary Creativity in Arts and Technology, Online.

[26]

Markellou, M., Rizou, K., Poulimenou, S.M., Mamalos, N., Vouliakis, A., Sigourtzidou, D., Tsiamalou, F., Iliopoulou, K.E., Komianos, V., and Deliyannis, I. (2022, January 13–14). An Interdisciplinary Approach on Constructing Virtual Reality Exhibitions: The Case of the Philatelic and Postal Museum of Greece. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges Interdisciplinary Creativity in Arts and Technology Hybrid, Corfu, Greece.

[27]

Ferracani, A., Faustino, M., Giannini, G.X., Landucci, L., and Del Bimbo, A. (2017, January 23–27). Natural experiences in museums through virtual reality and voice commands. Proceedings of the 25th ACM international conference on Multimedia, Mountain View, CA, USA. 10.1145/3123266.3127916

[28]

Calandra, D., Pratticò, F.G., and Lamberti, F. (2022, January 14–16). Comparison of hands-free speech-based navigation techniques for virtual reality training. Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE 21st Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference (MELECON), Palermo, Italy. 10.1109/melecon53508.2022.9842994

[29]

Latos "Interaction and information communication in virtual museums" IOP Conf. Ser. Mater. Sci. Eng. (2018) 10.1088/1757-899x/364/1/012038

[30]

Caldarelli, A., Di Tore, S., Ceccacci, S., Todino, M.D., Campitiello, L., and Giaconi, C. (2022, January 14–16). Co-designing Immersive and Inclusive Virtual Museum with children and People with Disabilities: A Pilot Study. Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI), Las Vegas, NV, USA. 10.1109/csci58124.2022.00353

[31]

Rojas, H., Renteria, R., Acosta, E., Arévalo, H., and Pilares, M. (2020, January 28–30). Application of accessibility guidelines in a virtual museum. Proceedings of the 2020 3rd International Conference of Inclusive Technology and Education (CONTIE), Baja California Sur, Mexico. 10.1109/contie51334.2020.00022

[32]

Zhao, Y., Cutrell, E., Holz, C., Morris, M.R., Ofek, E., and Wilson, A.D. (2019, January 4–9). SeeingVR: A set of tools to make virtual reality more accessible to people with low vision. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Glasgow, UK. 10.1145/3290605.3300341

[33]

Geris, A., Cukurbasi, B., Kilinc, M., and Teke, O. (2024). Balancing performance and comfort in virtual reality: A study of FPS, latency, and batch values. Software Pract. Exp. 10.1002/spe.3356

[34]

Rendevski, N., Veljanovski, K., and Emini, N. (July, January 29). FPS Performance Factors in Standalone Virtual Reality Applications. Proceedings of the 2023 58th International Scientific Conference on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST), Nis, Serbia. 10.1109/icest58410.2023.10187389

[35]

Hamzaturrazak, M., Jonemaro, E.M.A., and Pinandito, A. (July, January 29). Performance Analysis of 3D Rendering Method on Web-Based Augmented Reality Application Using WebGL and OpenGL Shading Language. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Sustainable Information Engineering and Technology, Nis, Serbia.

[36]

Feito "Web technologies applied to virtual heritage: An example of an Iberian Art Museum" J. Cult. Herit. (2012) 10.1016/j.culher.2011.10.001

[37]

Toivonen, K. (2022). Optimizing WebGL Application Performance by Identifying and Tackling Bottlenecks. [Master’s Thesis, University of Helsinki].

[38]

Tsipis "Arpa: An autonomous renderer placement algorithm in distributed multimedia fog networks with delay guarantees" ITU J. Future Evol. Technol. (2021) 10.52953/tsdt6782

[39]

Tsipis "Towards fairness and qoe-based edge allocation for multiplayer virtual reality applications in edge computing" ITU J. Future Evol. Technol. (2022) 10.52953/vavy1919

[40]

Cignoni "A comparison of mesh simplification algorithms" Comput. Graph. (1998) 10.1016/s0097-8493(97)00082-4

[41]

Gao "PROGRESS OF MESH REDUCTION METHODS" WIT Trans. Eng. Sci. (2023) 10.2495/be460091

[42]

"Perspectives on Virtual Museum Tours" INSAM J. Contemp. Music. Art Technol. (2020)

[43]

Alexis, M. (2024, October 05). People don’t want virtual museum tours; Do this instead. Museum Hack Website, Available online: https://museumhack.com/virtual-museum-tour-trends/.

[44]

Cicerchia "The show must go on… line. Museums and their audiences during the lockdown in Italy" SCIRES-IT RESearch Inf. Technol. (2021)

[45]

Cobley "Museums in the pandemic: A survey of responses on the current crisis" Mus. Worlds (2020) 10.3167/armw.2020.080109

[46]

Zhao "The duration perception of loading applications in smartphone: Effects of different loading types" Appl. Ergon. (2017) 10.1016/j.apergo.2017.06.015

[47]

Mortara "Learning cultural heritage by serious games" J. Cult. Herit. (2014) 10.1016/j.culher.2013.04.004

[48]

He, H., Xu, X., Bueno-Vesga, J., Li, S., and Gu, Y. (2023). Outdated or Not? A Case Study of How 3D Desktop VR Is Accepted Today. International Conference on Immersive Learning, Springer. 10.1007/978-3-031-47328-9_11

[49]

Curran "The future of web and mobile game development" Int. J. Cloud Comput. Serv. Sci. (2012)

[50]

Pavlidis "Methods for 3D digitization of cultural heritage" J. Cult. Herit. (2007) 10.1016/j.culher.2006.10.007

Showing 50 of 71 references

Metrics

14

Citations

71

References

Details

Published: Oct 13, 2024
Vol/Issue: 12(10)
Pages: 196
License: View

Authors

V

Vasileios Komianos

Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University, 49100 Corfu, Greece

A

Athanasios Tsipis

Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University, 49100 Corfu, Greece; Department of Digital Media and Communication, Ionian University, 28100 Argostoli, Greece

K

Katerina Kontopanagou

Hellenic Culture, Hellenic Open University, 26335 Patras, Greece

Funding

Corfu Virtual Exhibition Site for Tourism-Culture-Environment (v-Corfu) Award: 5031252

Cite This Article

Vasileios Komianos, Athanasios Tsipis, Katerina Kontopanagou (2024). Introducing Digitized Cultural Heritage to Wider Audiences by Employing Virtual and Augmented Reality Experiences: The Case of the v-Corfu Project. Technologies, 12(10), 196. https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies12100196

Introducing Digitized Cultural Heritage to Wider Audiences by Employing Virtual and Augmented Reality Experiences: The Case of the v-Corfu Project

You May Also Like