Experiencing Heritage through Immersive Environment using Affordable Virtual Reality Setup

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) technology allows the reproduction of spatial experience in a digital environment and simulates both real and imaginary world experience. The experience is created for various devices with different degrees of immersion. Several use cases of VR utilization have been explored in the architectural field, including historical buildings exploration in a distant place. However, VR is often associated with high investment in hardware and software. This study demonstrates VR utilization to experience off-site exploration of architectural heritage using a low-cost hardware setup and open-source software. We propose the possible workflow to create VR assets using Blender. Furthermore, we investigate the authoring pipeline to optimize the model for various devices. The result will be deployed as a VR environment under Mozilla Hubs, a WebXR-based platform that users can access simply from a web browser. With this workflow, the goal is to provide a low-cost VR experience for everyone where the environment can be easily accessed using the available existing device.