What Does History Look Like?

Virtual reality gives us the ability to assemble scenes, artefacts, avatars, end environments from the past to create a novel experience that is only available in high-budget movies, TV series, and games today. Bringing the day-to-day of the past to life gives us rich insight into how our ancestors lived.

The two primary challenges with historical artefacts in museums or private collections:

1. They are physically limited in-terms of access to researchers in particular, and to the wider audience in general. Many of these artefacts are invisible to the wider world, remain understudied, and possibly hide knowledge about historical events and lives.
2. The artefacts are in isolation, not in the context of their time period. And without this context, our ability to visualise, interpret, and understand the full extent of the artefact's value (or why it's on display) is lost to us.

And almost all artefacts are not 3D scanned and not available in a ready-to-use format for virtual reality. This adds another layer of complexity for transitioning into the spatial future. All these barriers add to delays in digitising deteroirating rare and priceless assets into 3D replicas that can be transmitted instantly across the world.

The whole nine yards!

1. Scan/model the artefact for accurate 3D representation.
2. Make it accessible through secure links/websites.
3. Story creation/narration using Fabrik's authoring studio. Appropriate 3D content, audio, and video content.
4. AR/VR readiness for at-home or in-museum consumption.
5. Setup VR centres in museums for visitors' experience re-living the past.
6. And do it one artefact at-a-time.

Introducing immersive technologies boost footfall to museums and audiences/visitors get to experience lives of their ancestors with the sights and sounds of that era. The artefacts that are not on display is made available for all audiences from around the world. And finally, think of every digital asset as a collectible (like Pokemon), and give audiences their favorite artefact or a historic car to take home after every visit.

Museums are limited by physical space limiting not only the number of people who can access it at once, but also limiting the number of artefacts on display. Virtual reality breaks both these barriers, and adds another dimension to experiencing museums in the future. Given the potential, it is natural museums in the near future will adopt more immersive technologies to increase both floor space and footfall without a massive upfront time and cost investments. Tools like Fabrik will be one-of-many helping them transition into a digitised and accessible future.