Virtualand: An Immersive Virtual Experience for Cultural and Natural Heritage Sites

Abstract

The cross-border area of Greece and Albania is characterized by a rich and diverse cultural heritage in a unique natural beauty setting that could form the basis for tourism development. Cultural heritage has been preserved in various printed and audiovisual material (aka Cultural Heritage Objects - CHOs for short) that are stored in libraries across this area. However, many of such CHOs that are part of the history, tradition and culture of the two nations, are being stored behind glass showcases or in the basement of the libraries with no access to visitors due to their sensitive condition or significance. The overall objective of this work is: (i) to identify, protect and preserve cultural heritage of the area through highlighting content included in rare, old, significant assets in the libraries. (ii) to act as a novel touristic concept that will result to an innovative attraction pole for all tourists visiting the area. The central feature is to provide tourists the opportunity to live an in-depth experience with tangible and intangible assets and better understand the traditions, history and culture of the CB area. To this end, VirtuaLand delivers a Virtual Reality (VR) interactive platform, where selected CHOs are converted to cultural and touristic scenarios. Users not only browse the assets of interest, but experience life into another era, become acquainted with the living conditions of that period and interact with characters of the era. VirtuaLand has produced a library of 3D objects and an open VR platform, that will be used by librarians and tourism professionals with limited programming skills to create their own VR stories.