Natural Interaction in Virtual Reality for Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Now that virtual reality has finally become a customer ready product, museums can use this new mean to enhance their exhibitions. The main problem however is that such a tool was not thought for casual users, and to adapt this new technology to short experiences such as the ones museums could provide, it is necessary to reduce the adaptation time to the new mean. In this paper, we discuss how removing physical controllers in favour of visually-tracked virtual hands could significantly reduce the time needed by casual users to adapt to new experiences, underlying the current technological limitations both in terms of technology and design.

A Prototype that Fuses Virtual Reality, Robots, and Social Networks to Create a New Cyber–Physical–Social Eco-Society System for Cultural Heritage

“…The affordances of presence and immersion, combined with the ability of VR to allow the development of environments that may be difficult or impossible to experience in the real world, are attributes that support motivations for technology adoption [21]. Despite initial adoption resistance [22], VR is now increasingly employed in museums to support and improve visitors' experiences and interaction with cultural heritage [23]. VR has, until recently been known as an expensive and resource-intensive technology challenged by technical issues and requirements.…”

Comparison of Modern and Traditional Ways of Perceiving Information about Selected Cultural Heritage Objects

“…trackball, touchpad (dnes známy najmä z notebookov), potom pákový ovládač, ako aj rôzne systémy na sledovanie pohybu očí. Z pôvodnej, čisto inžinierskej záležitosti sa však rýchlo stal problém interdisciplinárny, pretože svoje uplatnenie v tomto smere získali aj iné vedy -napríklad psychológia, kognitívna veda, ďalej rôzne štúdiá zamerané na výskum ľudskej pamäte a podobne (Galdieri, Carrozzino, 2019). V roku 1992 bol vyvinutý prvý systém, ktorý môžeme oficiálne pokladať za virtuálnu realitu (Zhao, 2012).…”

Virtual Museums as a New Type of Cyber-Physical-Social System

“…Virtual Museums support a mixture of traditional museum practices, utilizing a wide range of communication modes and current technological trends [8], which can customize visitors experience in a museum to improve their overall satisfaction [9][10][11]. Among the different technologies, the use of VR has been drawing a lot of attention and used in the field of cultural heritage, conservation, restoration, digital storytelling and education [12].…”

“…However, with the rapid development of technology it is now finally an affordable and mature customer-ready technology [26]. Despite some initial resistance to adopt [9], VR has been now increasingly used in museums to improve their visitors' experience and interactions with cultural heritage [12].…”

“…In modern days however, museum visitors demand more interactive, immersive and stimulating experience from what the traditional museology has to offer, which is mainly limited to displaying artefacts in glass cases accompanied by complex descriptions [8]. In the era of the 'museum experience' in which the visitor is seems as a consumer, visitors' satisfaction is crucial to support museums continuity [9]. With the recent advancements in technology, museums have started using smart phones, tablets and VR to support and enhance their visitor's experience, introducing the concept of Virtual Museums [1].…”