Actors in VR storytelling

Virtual Reality (VR) storytelling enhances the immersion of users into virtual environments (VE). Its use in virtual cultural heritage presentations helps the revival of the genius loci (the spirit of the place) of cultural monuments. This paper aims to show that the use of actors in VR storytelling adds to the quality of user experience and improves the edutainment value of virtual cultural heritage applications. We will describe the Baiae dry visit application which takes us to a time travel in the city considered by the Roman elite as "Little Rome (Pusilla Roma)" and presently is only partially preserved under the sea.Comment: Pre-print versio

Kyrenia - Hyper Storytelling Pilot Application

A team of multidisciplinary experts from computer science, visual arts, literature, film directing, psychology, communicology and human computer interaction developed a new interactive digital storytelling method - hyper storytelling. Hyper storytelling offers a solution for narrative paradox in introducing motivation factor into interactive digital story. In this paper we present Kyrenia - the first hyper storytelling application. Its purpose is to introduce the Internet users with the oldest sunken ship from 280 B.C., found in 1975 near Kyrenia, Cyprus

Interactive digital storytelling: bringing cultural heritage in a classroom

Interactive digital storytelling is becoming a popular choice for information presentation in many fields. Its application spans from the media industry and business information visualization, through digital cultural heritage, serious games, education, to contemporary theater and visual arts. The benefits of this form of multimedia presentation in education are generally recognized, and several studies which explore and support the opinion have been conducted. In addition to discussing the benefits, we wanted to address the challenges of introducing interactive digital storytelling and serious games in the classroom. The challenge of the inherent ambiguity of edutainment, due to opposing features of education and entertainment, is augmented with different viewpoints of multidisciplinary team members. We specifically address the opposing views on artistic liberty, at one side, and technical constraints and historical facts, on the other. In this paper, we present the first findings related to these questions and hope to initiate further discussions in this area

Improving Accessibility to Intangible Cultural Heritage Preservation using Virtual Reality.

Presentations of virtual Cultural Heritage artifacts are often communicated via the medium of interactive digital storytelling. The synergy of a storied narrative embedded within a 3D virtual reconstruction context have high consumer appeal and edutainment value. We investigate if 360◦ videos presented through virtual reality further contribute to user immersion for the application of preserving Intangible Cultural Heritage. A case study then analyses whether conventional desktop media is significantly different than virtual reality as a medium for immersion in intangible heritage contexts. The case study describes bridge diving at Stari Most, the old bridge in Mostar Bosnia. This application aims to present and preserve the bridge diving tradition at this site. The project describes the site and history along with cultural connections, a series of quiz questions are presented after viewing all of the materials. Successful completion of the quiz allows a user to participate in a virtual bridge dive. The subjective evaluation provided evidence to suggest that our method is successful in preserving intangible heritage and communicating ideas in key areas of concern for this heritage that can be used to develop a preservation framework in the future. It was also possible to conclude that experience within the VR framework did not affect Effort Expectancy for the web application, but the same experience made a significant influence for the Performance Expectancy construct