Amiais in Second Life™: the use of metaverse environments to disseminate Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Amiais is a small Portuguese village located in the Aveiro district. It is also a virtual village available in Second Life™. The recreation of Amiais in the metaverse is a part of the LOCUS project, which intends to use digital platforms to promote and disseminate local cultural heritage. Thus, a playful narrative was developed to explore the virtual territory and share cultural aspects of Amiais. The research presented in this article tested the users' response to the narrative, their immersive learning about cultural heritage, and the convergence between virtual and real territories. Users engaged with the narrative, interacted with the characters and scenario elements, and got curious about knowing the real territory after the virtual experience. The results confirm that using a metaverse with playful narratives and interaction encourages learning cultural heritage.

Second Life Multimedia Online Platform in Landscape Design: How do Multiverse Technologies Help Designers in Creating Environmentally Safe Projects?

“…Virtual universes have attracted the attention of architects, landscape designers, and urban environment designers from the outset as a unique modeling and design tool [18,19]. There are numerous successful projects to transfer copies of real objects and even entire settlements into virtual space [20][21][22]. However, the use of Second Life or Metaverse, as well as specialized virtual spaces for urban planning, is still in its early stages of development [13,23].…”

“…A significant group of studies is devoted to the transfer of real objects into virtual space and the use of such reflections for various purposes [11,19,22]. Also, part of the research focuses on understanding virtual worlds as centers of new economic and design development, considering them mainly as spaces of unlimited freedom [24, 26,29].…”

A Metaverse Platform for Preserving and Promoting Intangible Cultural Heritage

“…Tangible cultural assets typically benefit from VR visual and spatial capabilities, which allow users to immerse themselves in detailed replicas of historical sites or artifacts. The current literature presents several examples of 3D reconstructions of lost, inaccessible, or protected heritage sites using digital technologies [10][11][12][21][22][23][24], as well as digital replicas of museum halls and artifacts [25][26][27], becoming multi-user environments in which exploration and learning become a social experience.…”