Design and development of a spatial mixed reality touring guide to the Egyptian museum

Abstract

Many public services and entertainment industries utilise Mixed Reality (MR) devices to develop highly immersive and interactive applications. However, recent advancements in MR processing has prompted the tourist and events industry to invest and develop commercial applications. The museum environment provides an accessible platform for MR guidance systems by taking advantage of the ergonomic freedom of spatial holographical Head-mounted Displays (HMD). The application of MR systems in museums can enhance the typical visitor experience by amalgamating historical interactive visualisations simultaneously with related physical artefacts and displays. Current approaches in MR guidance research primarily focus on visitor engagement with specific content. This paper describes the design and development of a novel museum guidance system based on the immersion and presence theory. This approach examines the influence of interactivity, spatial mobility, and perceptual awareness of individuals within MR environments. The developmental framework of a prototype MR tour guide program named MuseumEye incorporates the sociological needs, behavioural patterns, and accessibility of the user. The data gathering procedure examines the functionality of the MuseumEye application in conjunction with pre-existing pharaonic exhibits in a museum environment. This methodology includes a qualitative questionnaire sampling 102 random visitors to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Results of this research study indicate a high rate of positive responses to the MR tour guide system, and the functionality of AR HMD in a museum environment. This outcome reinforces the suitability of the touring system to increase visitor experience in museums, galleries and cultural heritage sites.

Evaluation of virtual tour in an online museum: Exhibition of Architecture of the Forbidden City

“…In addition to the questionnaire, the interview is also a common method used in many similar studies [ 24 , 25 ], and the semi-structured interview is usually the most commonly used method for this kind of research [ 26 – 28 ]. The content of this interview is basically still centered on the four dimensions in the scale.…”

Museums, Artefacts and Cultural Heritage Sites

“…Reconstructing buildings as digital extensions to physical ruins and remains on cultural heritage sites by means of augmented reality (AR) has been experimented with for several decades. The earliest implementations were based on customized hardware and software solutions (Vlahakis et al, 2001), while over the past decade we have witnessed increased use of off-the-shelf hardware, primarily smartphones and tablets (Liestøl 2009;Madsen and Madsen 2013), but also smartglasses (Hammady et al, 2019). For the Gokstad case we used the situated simulation (Sitsim) AR platform, a type of Indirect Augmented Reality solution (Wither et al, 2011), which has been in development since 2008 (Liestøl et al, 2011).…”

An Examination on the Use of Immersive Reality Technologies in the Travel and Tourism Industry

“…Although the games and entertainment industry are the first to apply this technology, it is emphasized that VR applications can be used in health, education, engineering, construction, military and many other fields (Güzel, 2019). When other studies in the related field are examined (Gaberli, 2019;Ramos et al, 2018;Hammady et al, 2020), it is revealed that VR technology can be used in various fields in the travel and tourism industry.…”

“…According to the authors, it is a different experience that this technology combines the physical world and the virtual environment to increase interaction and reality. Travel and tourism is the industry area that is shown among the uses of MR (Gaberli, 2019;Hammady et al, 2020).…”