The web and its recent advancements represent a great opportunity to build universal, rich, multi-user and immersive Web3D/WebXR applications targeting Cultural Heritage field—including 3D presenters, inspection tools, applied VR games, collaborative teaching tools and much more. Such opportunity although, introduces additional challenges besides common issues and limitations typically encountered in this context. The “ideal” Web3D application should be able to reach every device, automatically adapting its interface, rendering and interaction models—resulting in a single, liquid product that can be consumed on mobile devices, PCs, Museum kiosks and immersive AR/VR devices, without any installation required for final users. The open-source ATON framework is the result of research and development activities carried out during the last 5 years through national and international projects: it is designed around modern and robust web standards, open specifications and large open-source ecosystems. This paper describes the framework architecture and its components, assessed and validated through different case studies. ATON offers institutions, researchers, professionals a scalable, flexible and modular solution to craft and deploy liquid web-applications, providing novel and advanced features targeting Cultural Heritage field in terms of 3D presentation, annotation, immersive interaction and real-time collaboration.

This paper presents a full life-cycle production and standardized workflow to deploy a shared and engaging gesture-based experience within a museum, connecting two different natural interaction applications. The research presented in this paper is specifically focused on Admotum and Holoint, two gesture-based applications developed for the V-Must.net in occasion of “Keys to Rome” international exhibition on Roman Culture. The workflow described here includes 3D content production, application design, development and integration within flexible museum setups, together with evaluation activities to explore more on the user's' educational benefits and the potential of such collaborative museum experience.

Within the EU CEMEC project framework, a novel approach for using holographic showcases in museums has been conceived and experimented upon in different venues in the context of an itinerant exhibition dealing with Early Medieval European collections. The purpose of this holographic showcase, the so-called “box of stories”, is to improve the link and interaction between real and virtual contents in the museum’s context, making the exhibited object “alive” in the visitors’ perception. An Avar sword and a Byzantine treasure have been used as the main case studies, and they have been experienced in the museums of several European regions by audiences with different cultural backgrounds. This has been a great opportunity to carry out user experience (UX) evaluations in order to collect feedback (from about 600 museum visitors) regarding the attractiveness of such a mixed reality (MR) system, its usability, the comprehension of the contents, the efficacy of the logistics and environmental conditions, as well as the educational impact. The results of such inquiries helped the CNR ISPC team to identify the most meaningful User eXperience Analytics (UXA) able to support the work of UX evaluators and UX designers to assess the efficacy of digital cultural products. Indeed, this manuscript presents UXA and tries to draft a concrete and effective evaluation model for future digital projects for museum contexts.

The research aims to optimize a workflow of architecture documentation: starting from panoramic photos, tackling available instruments and technologies to propose an integrated, quick and low-cost solution of Virtual Architecture. The broader research background shows how to use spherical panoramic images for the architectural metric survey. The input data (oriented panoramic photos), the level of reliability and Image-based Modeling methods constitute an integrated and flexible 3D reconstruction approach: from the professional survey of cultural heritage to its communication in virtual museum. The proposed work results from the integration and implementation of different techniques (Multi-Image Spherical Photogrammetry, Structure from Motion, Imagebased Modeling) with the aim to achieve high metric accuracy and photorealistic performance. Different documentation chances are possible within the proposed workflow: from the virtual navigation of spherical panoramas to complex solutions of simulation and virtual reconstruction. VR tools make for the integration of different technologies and the development of new solutions for virtual navigation. Image-based Modeling techniques allow 3D model reconstruction with photo realistic and high-resolution texture. High resolution of panoramic photo and algorithms of panorama orientation and photogrammetric restitution vouch high accuracy and high-resolution texture. Automated techniques and their following integration are subject of this research. Data, advisably processed and integrated, provide different levels of analysis and virtual reconstruction joining the photogrammetric accuracy to the photorealistic performance of the shaped surfaces. Lastly, a new solution of virtual navigation is tested. Inside the same environment, it proposes the chance to interact with high resolution oriented spherical panorama and 3D reconstructed model at once.

Ancient manuscripts are precious and fragile objects, preserved in libraries, museums, and archives. Some of them are masterpieces, made with several materials and insights, but generally they are not accessible to wide communities of users. The purpose of this study is to present the preliminary results of the Codex4D project: a holographic showcase, conceived for museums, presenting the first 4D model of an ancient manuscript to the public at the Science Festival in Genoa in 2022. The manuscript, preserved in the Angelica Library in Rome, has been represented in a multidimensional digital model, documenting both its visible and invisible aspects, on the surface and in the stratigraphic layers. We analysed the visitor experience: informal learning, the meaning-making process, interactions between visitors, and gesture-based interaction with the showcase. The methodology used for evaluation is based on four different qualitative methods (grounded theory, narrative inquiry, case study, and digital ethnography). We collected notes from observation, narratives from interviews, and answers from structured interviews. The main findings are patterns of the visitors’ experiences with a digital interactive 4D model of an ancient manuscript, supported by storytelling, and a list of design issues and possible improvements for the next version of the Codex4D holographic showcase.

Information about the paper titled "BEYOND THE MUSEUM’S OBJECT. ENVISIONING STORIES" at IATED Digital Library