Skip to main content
Disciplines
Automotive Business IT + Informatics Construction + Real Estate Electrical Engineering + Electronics Energy + Sustainability Insurance + Risk Finance + Banking Management + Leadership Marketing + Sales Mechanical Engineering + Materials
Events
DE
EN
Books
Journals
Topic Page
Marketing
Start single access now
Access for companies
EXTENDED SEARCH
Log in
Top

2022 | Book

Virtual Travel: Being Not Quite “There” Read chapter Read first chapter

Playing with the Past: Into the Future

Author: Erik Champion

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Human–Computer Interaction Series

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Login to get access
insite
SEARCH

About this book

Since the turn of this century (and even earlier), a plethora of projects have arisen to promise us bold new interactive adventures and immersive travel into the past with digital environments (using mixed, virtual or augmented reality, as well as computer games). In Playing with the Past: Into the Future Erik Champion surveys past attempts to communicate history and heritage through virtual environments and suggests new technology and creative ideas for more engaging and educational games and virtual learning environments.

This second edition builds on and updates the first edition with new game discussions, surveys, design frameworks, and theories on how cultural heritage could be experienced in digital worlds, via museums, mobile phones, or the Metaverse. Recent games and learning environments are reviewed, with provocative discussion of new and emerging promises and challenges.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Virtual Travel: Being Not Quite “There”
Abstract
This chapter explores issues and consequences associated with travel and tourism. I examine the disastrous effects of tourism on sites around the world, from England to South America, the issue of air travel, and missing opportunities for learning once one reaches a heritage site. So there are possible advantages to using virtual reality technology to create virtual travel, savings in cost and time, safety, minimizing pollution, for the pre-planning of intended visits, or for providing situated information not currently available at the site. The interactive opportunities of digital media may help personalization and customization of the user experience. However, we have four major issues to contend with. How do we create a sense of place in a virtual environment? How do we provide for a feeling of cultural presence that appears to inhabit the virtual site? How realistic and historically accurate does the environment and interaction need to be? And how do we balance the value of entertainment with the need for demonstrably effective learning?
Erik Champion
Chapter 2. Virtual Environments: Constraints and Possibilities
Abstract
How can we increase awareness and understanding of other cultures using interactive online digital visualizations of past civilizations? In order to answer the above question, this chapter first questions the success of current virtual environments and asks whether they are capable of producing a platform that supports the experience and understanding of place-inscribed culture. To answer this question, a typology of successful virtual environment applications is suggested. These include online communities, virtual reality travel websites, game engines, virtual reality used for training, and virtual reality used as part of therapeutic means to either relax or divert patients, or to cure phobias. Impeding the success of virtual environments in terms of technological constraints, lack of evaluation techniques and results, and a lack of content-specific applications that best utilize desktop computing capabilities and respond to user needs. It suggests that much more work needs to be done on not just usable but also useful content. Specifically, there is a large gap in knowledge on what might constitute useful and appropriate virtual travel environments, and how contextual interaction may affect our cultural understanding in these environments.
Erik Champion
Chapter 3. Space and Place in Cyberspace
Abstract
This chapter deals with the key issue, of creating a meaningful sense of place. This chapter outlines limitations of the ‘cyberspace’ theorists’ notions of place and suggests how these limitations adversely affect virtual heritage environments. A fivefold description of different features of place that may be appropriate for virtual environments is proposed. These five features of place are summarized as:
  • Uniqueness of atmosphere, selection of artifacts etc.
  • Some places in nature have the ability to shock or overawe the spectator.
  • Memorable places have the power of evoking memories and associations.
  • Some places act as either stage or framework on which communal and individual activity can ‘take place’.
  • Communal places have the ability to identify and reflect individual participants.
Combing literature and various creative arts suggest various components that help create the above place-experiences. Embodiment and dynamic attenuating environmental features as well as phobic triggers; social embedding and cultural agency; place as an inscribable artifact; and causal feedback are all suggested. I note here that there is a danger in automatically simulating all of the above elements digitally. From the point of view of the designer, a roadmap for designing for three distinct audiences and intentions is instead suggested. The three types of environments are categorized as visualization-based, activity affording, or hermeneutically enriched. The last type of virtual environment is a new addition to the literature of place and cyberspace, and will be focused on, for the importance of place as a cultural site is a central concern in this book. For virtual heritage environments in particular, we need to have a clear and distinct idea of what place as a cultural site and the related sense of ‘cultural presence’ entails.
Erik Champion
Chapter 4. Culturally Significant Presence
Abstract
Unfortunately, the academic communities that respectively research virtual heritage and virtual presence do not often converge. One group has tended to ignore the individual differences and experiential requirements of participants, and the other has tended to conflate culture with society. This chapter highlights problems in the research community’s definitions of presence, and specifically distinguishes Cultural Presence from Social Presence. Although the distinction may initially sound academic, this chapter argues that it is of great importance to participants’ cultural learning, and that it affects the perceived authenticity of their virtual environment experience. Having suggested that the specific cultural aspects of virtual environments require more careful attention from the academic community, this chapter then discusses the usefulness and danger of adherence to photo-realism. This chapter is not an outright attack on realism, but an attempt to show where attempts at realism may obscure other important issues, especially in education.
Erik Champion
Chapter 5. What Have We Learnt from Game–Style Interaction?
Abstract
Creating a descriptive and to some degree prescriptive taxonomy of place and describing the confusing but vital concept of culture only takes us so far. We also need to explore game-style interaction and how virtual environments can learn from its fundamental components in order to make them both more engaging and more educational. This chapter discusses related how we can apply game-style interaction for virtual environments and provides examples and prototypes that aim to break down the ‘magic circle’, immerse participants spatially, and thematically incorporate peripherals and interfaces into the learning environment. Using these ideas we can also incorporate more effective feedback mechanisms and evaluation strategies.
Erik Champion
Chapter 6. Playing with the Past: Case Studies
Abstract
From an explanation of virtual heritage and the problem of culture, this chapter provides a selective overview of games, game mods, and game-like virtual environments offering insight and potential in communicating cultural significance, affording learning about the past through immersion and engagement.
Erik Champion
Chapter 7. Mixed Histories, Augmented Pasts
Abstract
There is widespread confusion over the terms augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality, but there is a further term as well, augmented virtuality. A new term, Extended Reality, or XR, promises to do away with the confusion by gathering all of the terms under its umbrella label. But there is also the apparently new concept of the Metaverse, which has again confused, inspired, or irritated. Rather than attempt to cover all the major developments of this rapidly changing field, this chapter selects highlights that provide particular opportunities and issues of concern for the field of virtual heritage.
Erik Champion
Chapter 8. Evaluating Virtual Heritage in the Future
Abstract
This chapter is an overview of evaluation studies and techniques into virtual environments in general, and those that evaluate presence in particular. It then critiques academic papers in virtual heritage over the last decade and argues that while those who design virtual heritage environments can still learn from the presence research community, that these findings and techniques cannot be applied immediately and directly. This chapter also covers an evaluation into cultural learning in virtual environments and discusses some of the pitfalls and potential uncovered by the Palenque case study. For example results indicate that incorporating game–style interaction while increasing engagement may impede cultural learning. The findings may be of particular interest to researchers involved in virtual heritage and cultural tourism. The chapter also presents lessons learnt from applying various evaluation methods, and the complex issues of experimental design.
Erik Champion
Chapter 9. An Open Conclusion
Abstract
In the conclusion, the previous eight chapters are summarized, the three-part theory defining three types of virtual environments is returned to, and I mention some possible reasons why there has so far been little research undertaken on the relationship between interaction and cultural learning in virtual environments. For cultural presence is not the same as social presence, and the ways in which we learn culture are typically interactive and hybrid; they are not easily simulated. I then return to my working definition of virtual heritage but now align it to international heritage charters and with these in mind I propose five aims to fulfill when designing virtual heritage environments.
Erik Champion
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Playing with the Past: Into the Future
Author
Erik Champion
Copyright Year
2022
Electronic ISBN
978-3-031-10932-4
Print ISBN
978-3-031-10931-7
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10932-4