Virtual Museums for all: Employing Game Technology for Edutainment

George Lepouras, Costas Vassilakis
Virtual Reality Journal, Springer-Verlag, Vol. 8, No. 2, (2004), pp. 96-106.

Abstract
Museums have started to realise the potential of new technologies for the development of edutainment content and services for their visitors. Virtual reality technologies promise to offer a vivid, enjoyable experience to the museums guests, but the cost in time, effort and resources can prove to be overwhelming. In this paper, we propose the use of 3D game technologies for the purpose of developing affordable, easy to use and pleasing virtual environments. To this end, we present a case study based on an already developed version of a virtual museum and a newly implemented version that uses game technologies. The informal assessment indicates that game technologies can offer a prominent and viable solution to the need for affordable desktop virtual reality systems.

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