Presentations of virtual cultural heritage artifacts are often communicated via the medium of interactive digital storytelling. The synergy of a storied narrative embedded within a 3D virtual reconstruction context has high consumer appeal and edutainment value. We investigate if 360° videos presented through virtual reality further contribute to user immersion for the application of preserving intangible cultural heritage. A case study then analyzes whether conventional desktop media is significantly different from virtual reality as a medium for immersion in intangible heritage contexts. The case study describes bridge diving at Stari Most, the old bridge in Mostar Bosnia. This application aims to present and preserve the bridge diving tradition at this site. The project describes the site and history along with cultural connections, and a series of quiz questions are presented after viewing all of the materials. Successful completion of the quiz allows a user to participate in a virtual bridge dive. The subjective evaluation provided evidence to suggest that our method is successful in preserving intangible heritage and communicating ideas in key areas of concern for this heritage that can be used to develop a preservation framework in the future. It was also possible to conclude that experience within the virtual reality framework did not affect effort expectancy for the web application, but the same experience significantly influenced the performance expectancy construct.

This paper presents a combined subjective and objective evaluation of an application mixing interactive virtual reality (VR) experience with 360° storytelling. The hypothesis that the modern immersive archaeological VR application presenting cultural heritage from a submerged site would sustain high levels of presence, immersion, and general engagement was leveraged in the investigation of the user experience with both the subjective (questionnaires) and the objective (neurophysiological recording of the brain signals using electroencephalography (EEG)) evaluation methods. Participants rated the VR experience positively in the questionnaire scales for presence, immersion, and subjective judgement. High positive rating concerned also the psychological states linked to the experience (engagement, emotions, and the state of flow), and the experience was mostly free from difficulties linked to the accustomization to the VR technology (technology adoption to the head-mounted display and controllers, VR sickness). EEG results are in line with past studies examining brain responses to virtual experiences, while new results in the beta band suggest that EEG is a viable tool for future studies of presence and immersion in VR.

Digital technologies in the modern era are almost mandatory for the presentation of all types of cultural heritage. Virtual depictions of crafts and traditions offer the users the possibility of time travel, taking them to the past through the use of 3D reconstructions of cultural monuments and sites. However, digital resources alone are not enough to adequately present cultural heritage. Additional information on the historical context in the form of stories, virtual reconstructions, and digitized objects is needed. All of this can be implemented using a digital multimedia presentation technique called digital storytelling. Nowadays, an integral part of many museum exhibitions is interactive digital storytelling. This paper gives an overview of the techniques and discusses different means of facilitating interaction on digital storytelling applications for virtual cultural heritage presentations. We describe the ways in which natural interaction and interaction via eXtended Reality (Virtual and Augmented Reality) applications for cultural heritage are made possible. Users will find the stories told through these applications educational and entertaining at the same time. Through user-experience studies, we measure the user edutainment level and present how users react to implemented interactions.

Interactive digital storytelling becomes a form of information presentation in many fields. Its application spans from media industry through digital cultural heritage, serious games, information visualization to contemporary theater and visual arts. In order to develop a new digital storytelling methodology hyper-storytelling, we engaged a team of multidisciplinary experts from computer science, visual arts, literature, film directing, psychology, communicology and human computer interaction. In this paper we present the first findings of this team in form of guidelines for interactive digital storytelling presentations of cultural heritage.