New Cross/Augmented Reality Experiences for the Virtual Museums of the Future

Mixed Reality (MR) applications and technologies have become quite popular nowadays. They are used in many areas (e.g. Games, Entertainment, Education, etc.). But what about Cultural Heritage? Cultural Heritage is an area that presents a great variety of opportunities for MR applications. These opportunities include storytelling (a way for visitors to learn and retain more information about the exhibitions that they explore), gamified presence (an incentivizing tool to keep them attentive during their visit) and many more. This paper discusses the creation of Cross/Augmented Reality applications for the Industrial Museum and Cultural Center in the region of Thessaloniki, and presents some early results. The region of Central Macedonia has a rich history and its Cultural Heritage is extremely significant. The local importance of Cultural Heritage can be observed in the actions undertaken by local authorities, as well as the region’s participation in European Cultural Heritage projects. The creation of Cross/Augmented applications can greatly contribute to the preservation and promotion of Cultural Heritage. These technologies are not only liable to prove very popular with the public due to their current mass appeal; they are likely to shape the Virtual Museums of the future. Overall, the main contribution of this paper is to provide the first bibliographical reference to examine the implementation of Virtual Museums in Cross Reality, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality using both ARKit and ARCore’s latest APIs.