IMMERSIVE PRESERVATION: UTILIZING VIRTUAL REALITY TO SAFEGUARD CULTURAL HERITAGE

Abstract

Virtual reality is a rather underutilized technique when it comes to the preservation of cultural heritage. This trait comes from VR on its own being a harder tool to justify using when compared to than traditional archival techniques, prevalence of which, however, is immensely helpful in cases when a digital archive is to be created. Immersive experiences can serve as yet another avenue by which we can safeguard and preserve our common culture or history in their many parts ranging from clothes, architecture, works of decorative and fine arts to landscape itself. It is immensely useful because it provides us with a way to popularize our own cultural achievements and tell the world about them in a way that is second best after live visits to our museums and galleries. It will also require entirely new kinds of research, categorisation and presentation, but this is true about any new methods, but also indirectly benefits adjacent fields of study. For example, to showcase architectural complexes, they would need to be scanned, modeled digitally and appropriately textured, which will also give us not only a 3D model for VR environment, but a usable model for non-invasive studies. In a scenario when building itself ceases to exist, we will have enough data to restore it to its original condition if it is decided to be the best course of action. Through VR however, history itself can be brought back to life through recreation of real events in their surroundings, that could be used to engage people with their own country’s past and in an indirect way preserve it through generations in much the same ways as it was done before. As the process itself needs further research and is expected to be highly tailored to each case, we will leave it outside of the scope of this article. Instead we will take a look at modern, mostly freely available, projects that have successfully done this and can be used as examples for the future work in this field.