The design and implementation of virtual museums have evolved over decades, broadening the scope of traditional museum exhibitions and serving as an effective complement to physical museums. However, virtual visual effects have consistently fallen short of replicating the authentic exhibition experience and cannot substitute for physical museums. In this paper, we report a dual-mode mixed visualization system combining computational photography and binocular stereo vision techniques, and introduce an innovative virtual museum for Sanxingdui bronzes. This approach enables visitors to engage with the artifacts in a multifaceted manner-allowing for navigation, interaction, auditory guidance, and the examination of textural details as if handling the artifacts directly. Further analysis of participant responses in terms of visual cognition and aesthetic appreciation across different settings demonstrates that this dual-mode mixed visualization delivers not only a spatiotemporal experience consistent with the real world but also surreal visual effects. This immersive experience allows audiences to experience Sanxingdui art intimately, offering both high-resolution visuals and cost-effectiveness.

As a digital extension of physical museums, virtual museums overcome the limitations of space and resources, meet the demand for remote access, and play an important role in cultural heritage preservation and education. However, traditional virtual museums are often limited to simple navigation and display functions, lacking in-depth interaction and struggling to provide personalized learning experiences. To address this, this paper designs an interactive virtual museum (IVM) system, using the Sanxingdui culture as an example, which includes various types of serious games in nine applications. The aim is to provide a more immersive and personalized cultural heritage learning experience. The study constructs three types of IVMs: a personal computer-based virtual museum (PC-IVM), an augmented reality virtual museum (AR-IVM), and a mixed reality virtual museum (MR-IVM), and evaluates their impact on the museum educational experience. In an within-subjects design experiment, 30 school participants and 12 museum visitors were recruited to measure 9 user experience dimensions, including learning motivation, engagement, flow experience, etc. The quantitative results showed that MR-IVM significantly outperformed other forms in all dimensions and demonstrated higher usability. Qualitative analyses further indicated that the majority of participants enjoyed experiencing the MR-IVM platform, and was more popular in action-adventure and puzzle-solving games. However, AR-IVM was more favored by participants in casual-competitive games. The study suggests that the designed extended reality (XR) system has a positive impact on museum cultural education, effectively complementing the physical museum experience and enhancing user engagement. Through gamified learning, it further improves learning outcomes. The results provide valuable insights for the future application of XR technology in cultural heritage education and open new directions for the development of virtual museums and the promotion of game-based learning.

Intangible cultural heritage is a people-centered living cultural heritage. Preservation, promotion, and talent cultivation are important aspects of intangible cultural heritage protection and also crucial guarantees for sustainable development. However, traditional video recordings lack three-dimensional spatial information, and the high cost of digital scanning and reconstruction still leaves no convenient, efficient, accurate, realistic, and low-cost solution for the preservation and dissemination of intangible cultural heritage projects. Here we introduce the binocular 180-degree panoramic display method, through which a platform for recording, showcasing, disseminating, and teaching intangible cultural heritage projects in the Sanlin Old Street of Shanghai was implemented. The platform requires only VR filming without the need for 3D modeling technology. The participants can freely select intangible cultural heritage projects on the map and immerse themselves in watching the Sanlin “Three Excellence” porcelain carving, local cuisine, and embroidery. They can also enjoy the dragon dance, experience the textile craftsmanship of Sanlin’s “Three Specialties”, and even observe the production process and details of the works from the perspective of the inheritor in the first person. The results show that compared to traditional video recordings and digital scanning reconstruction, the binocular 180-degree panoramic display provides a one-to-one, face-to-face, and low-cost solution for the preservation and dissemination of projects. It allows students to increase their knowledge of intangible cultural heritage and enhance their interest in inheritance.

In this article, we propose a lightweight and flexible enhanced Tai Chi training system composed of multiple standalone virtual reality (VR) devices. The system aims to enable a hyper-realistic multi-user action training platform at low cost by displaying real-time action guidance trajectories, providing real-world impossible visual effects and functions, and rapidly enhancing movement precision and communication interest for learners. We objectively evaluate participants' action quality at different levels of immersion, including traditional coach guidance (TCG), VR, and mixed reality (MR), along with subjective measures like motion sickness, quality of interaction, social meaning, presence/immersion to comprehensively explore the system's feasibility. The results indicate VR performs the best in training accuracy, but MR provides superior social experience and relatively high accuracy. Unlike TCG, MR offers hyper-realistic hand movement trajectories and Tai Chi social references. Compared with VR, MR provides more realistic avatar companions and a safer environment. In summary, MR balances accuracy and social experience.

This study explores the differences in audience behavior between virtual museums and physical museums. The replica-based virtual museum (RVM) was developed to replicate the exhibit layout of physical museums and support multi-user online visits. The study introduces the RVM-Interaction (RVM-I), which incorporates interactive features to enhance user engagement. In the experiment, 24 participants experienced a physical museum (PM), RVM, RVM-I, and a traditional PC-based virtual museum, with their impressions and behavioral patterns recorded. The results indicate no significant differences between RVM and PM in terms of satisfaction, immersion, aesthetic experience, and social interaction. RVM-I significantly enhanced the participants’ experience through its interactive capabilities. Path analysis shows that both RVM and RVM-I improved audience efficiency, with RVM-I transforming the circumferential, space-based art appreciation found in PM and RVM into a stationary, space-based form, making RVM-I more engaging than RVM. These findings offer valuable insights for the design and development of virtual museum experiences that maintain spatial fidelity to physical exhibitions while enhancing user engagement through interactivity.