Hybrid Virtual Reality Touch Table - An Immersive Collaborative Platform for Public Explanatory Use of Cultural Objects and Sites

Abstract

In this work we present an interactive and immersive solution for scientific data exploration which target visitors to museums and science centers, where the visitors themselves can conduct self-guided tours of scientific data, such as 3D scans of objects with cultural, historical or archaeological importance. The solution consist of a interactive multi-touch table with intuitive user interfaces, combined with head-mounted display and optional wireless controller. A visitor can explore the scientific data, but also a virtually created environment of the historical object(s), where found and acquired, which may be impossible for the visitor to visit and explore in real life. Visitors can work together to explore the data in close detail as well as guide other visitors in an explanatory manor. This interactive learning experience is designed to be versatile and suitable for visitors of various ages or with disabilities, by combining numerous views of the data as well as numerous interaction techniques to explore the data. Our approach and realization was created for the use case of an exploration application with reconstructed data of a sunken 16th century ship, which physically still lies on the seabed. Our motivation to create interactive stories along with as useful explanatory tool for domain experts lead us to this multi-purpose approach.