Digitalization of ancient fabric using virtual reality technology at the Wieng Yong House Museum: The FabricVR project

Abstract

The FabricVR project (https://angkaew.com/virtual_museum/) is aimed at digitizing the ancient fabric of the Wieng Yong House Museum for visitors to visit the site and obtain the cultural heritage knowledge in the COVID-19 pandemic during which the museum was forced to close as a result of the global pandemic restrictions. The project's goal is to develop technology to visualize cultural resources on a digital platform. To provide a visitor experience of a virtual museum, the project consists of three systems: first,3D FabricVR is a 3D virtual reality application which was designed based on the gamification concept to allow for an immersive experience for visitors to obtain knowledge of digital preservation. Second, 360° FabricVR: a web-based application of 360 virtual reality that enables visitors to have a flexible and easy exploration of the virtual museum via web-based browser. Finally, the web-based digital collection provides the organised information access to the repository of ancient fabric in the museum by the standard meta of VRA core. We evaluated the project by quantitative feedback of museum visitors of the Wieng Yong House Museum. Finally we embedded the project (http://lis.human.cmu.ac.th/virtual_museum/) as an extension of the university website providing a virtual museum services website for collaborations and with the benefits of sharing museum collections online.