Networked 3D Virtual Museum System

Virtual heritage has become increasingly important in the conservation, preservation, and interpretation of our cultural and natural history. Moreover, rapid advances in digital technologies in recent years offer virtual heritage new direction. This paper introduces our approach toward a networked 3D virtual museum system, especially, how to model, manage, present virtual heritages and furthermore how to use computer network for the share of virtual heritage in the networked virtual environment. This paper first addresses a 3D acquisition and processing technique for virtual heritage modeling and shows some illustrative examples. Then, this paper describes a management of virtual heritage assets that are composed by various rich media. This paper introduces our schemes to present the virtual heritages, which include 3D virtual heritage browser system, CAVE system, and immersive VR theater. Finally, this paper presents the new direction of networked 3D virtual museum of which main idea is remote guide of the virtual heritage using the mixed reality technique.