An integrated VR/AR framework for user-centric interactive experience of cultural heritage: The ArkaeVision project

The ArkaeVision project is aimed at enabling a new way of enjoying Cultural Heritage through a more engaging and culturally-qualified user experience. The main goal is the creation of a technological infrastructure for the permanent enhancement of cultural resources. Hence, ArkaeVision represents a user-centric integrated system able to offer different modalities of exploitation of Cultural Heritage assets, including virtual representations of monuments, works of art and objects, as well as the stories associated to them. ArkaeVision therefore introduces a new communication paradigm, made of game-alike exploration of a 3D environment, virtually reconstructed, with elements of digital fiction and an engaging stortytelling, applied to two case studies: the exploration of the Hera II Temple of Paestum with Virtual Reality (VR) technology, and the exploration of the slab of the Swimmer Tomb with Augmented Reality (AR). The emotional component is fundamental in ArkaeVision, because it generates the motivation and leads people to use immersive viewers, as the HTC Vive, which allow the learning process to be activated more quickly, as many cognitivists and psychologists reported in the latest researches. Also the involvement of users through gamification is well expressed in ArkaeVision. This model of action (and interaction) designed for the public allows to emphasize the role of users through a system that is “guided” by their choices and times, in order to increase users’ engagement within the virtual exploration, and favour the content understanding by direct experience. Evaluations conducted on a preliminary prototype suggested that the communicative approach is very promising for education and engagement into cultural heritage experiences.