Virtual Reality Interpretation

At E3 last week the new Microsoft Hololens was announced. It was used to augment Minecraft, and it looks incredible!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgakdcEzVwg

I’m excited for about ten years’ time when it might finally be affordable enough to get one!

I got to thinking about how virtual reality headsets like these could be used in a museum as an interpretation tool. I’ve already written about Minecraft in the museum, and those who know me will know that I bloody love Minecraft, so obviously VR could be used to make any Minecraft in the museum 100000x more exciting, interactive and engaging. But how else could it be used?

• I was excited by the idea of being able to rent a lens, as we rent or pick up audio equipment now, and then use it throughout the whole museum (on certain exhibits or throughout). I think this could be really exciting if you were able to interact with historical people or really get into the
• You could keep a VR headset in a fixed place, like a viewfinder. I thought this would work nicely in somewhere like the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, where a ‘VR viewfinder’ could be placed in front of the Ishtar Gate, for example, and visitors would be able to stand within a 6ft square area and look around with the VR headset on. The Ishtar Gate would look as it did when it was built and the surrounding area would look like Babylon. There would be people walking around and you would be able to hear and see a live reconstruction virtually.

I think this would be really good as people come to expect the digital in their everyday lives. For Generation Z (those born in 1994 and later) who have grown up with smartphones, tablets and pretty unlimited internet access, there will reach a point when a museums technology isn’t exciting enough to engage. We may even have reached that point already, as museum technology (excepting in the biggest museums) always lags behind tech innovations as a whole. So something like a Hololens, and staying at the forefront of digital technology in a museum is really important to keep people interested.

There are some setbacks. At the moment VR technology is in its earliest stages and it would be extremely expensive to use. But as technology improves it always becomes more efficient and cheaper. Also, for VR to work in a space, you need to map it with infra-red – for a museum-wide headset, this could be tricky and time and cost expensive.

I would never advocate for a purely digital interpretation strategy – it suits some people but not others, and I think the museum object should always be at the forefront. But I think virtual reality offers some really exciting opportunities in the future for engaging Generation Z and beyond.