ABSTRACT
MNLTour is a virtual tour system for selected tourist spots situated within the city of Manila. It utilizes 360-degree images, 2D images, voice recordings, and virtual reality technology to offer an immersive user experience of the virtual environment. The virtual tour system was developed using the Unity3D software and was then integrated into web and mobile applications accessible through web browsers and android smartphones, respectively. MNLTour aims to promote the wonders of Manila city by showcasing some of its historical tourist spots that have been severely affected by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The developed web and mobile applications were tested and later evaluated to assess the overall quality of the software in accordance with ISO 9126 standard. The evaluation statements primarily focus on the aspects of functionality, efficiency, usability, effectiveness, and user satisfaction in using the application. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze and summarize the data gathered from the evaluation respondents. The evaluation of the application in both platforms turned out to have admirable evaluation results;hence, it's safe to say that the developed software has an acceptable overall quality. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Despite the significant loss, pandemic Covid-19 had been an enabler for digital transformation, specifically in Indonesia. In the tourism industry, the emergence of virtual tours brings fresh fashion for people to spend their leisure time. Following the calming down pandemic, the innovation of virtual tourism or virtual tours can promote specific tourist locations, which are expected to increase interest and decisions to visit. This research intends to discover virtual tours' power to attract visitors. The researcher used a quantitative method with simple linear regression analysis and distributed questionnaires to 104 people who had participated in virtual tours using meeting platform such as Zoom, Google Meet, or Webex. The results of this study indicate that the virtual tour influences the tourists' interest and decision to visit, at a moderate correlation level based on Pearson Correlation Test, with a percentage of 34.6% and 30%, respectively, based on R2 result. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Many tour providers have pinned their hopes on providing virtual tours to bring back visitors in the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In this paper, we develop an analytical model to examine whether free virtual tours can help attract more visitors. We consider a tour provider deciding whether to provide a free virtual tour and its grade if any is provided to maximize visitors' physical presence. Potential visitors possess heterogeneous preferences and perceived equivalence, and the tour provider knows only their respective random distributions. The model is solved to maximize tour providers' physical demand. Our analysis finds that a free virtual tour can help if potential visitors significantly underestimate the physical tour and identifies the critical threshold;we also find that the COVID-19 pandemic reduces the likelihood that a free virtual tour can help. This paper contributes to the tourism management community by accentuating the dark side of virtual tours, suggesting that tour providers should be prudent before introducing any virtual tour. We also provide guidelines for virtual tourism, helping tour providers respond to and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and other uncertain situations.
ABSTRACT
Virtual tours are tools that could be effectively used in many different contexts. The COVID-19 pandemic has let emerge how they can be useful and efficacy in those situations where it is not possible to access physical places and attend events. Besides that, they can be used for several goals in different contexts. In fact, in simple words, virtual tours are essentially based on using 3D images and videos, letting the users interact with the virtual environment and its points of interest through them, emphasizing the need for navigation and orienteering mechanisms within the virtual environment. Due to these characteristics, virtual tours represent digital barriers affecting users with disabilities, in particular those people with visual impairments. This paper presents an innovative solution we have adopted by designing and developing a prototype devoted to exploring a University Campus, with accessibility in mind. A preliminary evaluation has been conducted, and the obtained results are presented in the paper, which discusses some potentialities and limitations that emerged, © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Chulalongkorn University Memorial Hall is an important historic landmark in Thailand that collects and displays valuable and interesting documents and items from the history of the Chulalongkorn University, which is the first university established by the Thai dynasty. Many notable historical relics from Chulalongkorn University have been displayed for visitors inside the museum, including a miniature of King Chulalongkorn's equestrian statue, a coronet (Phra Kiew), and a graduation gown. Over the past two years, due to the COVID-19 situation, the number of visitors to the museum has been restricted. Therefore, we propose to solve this problem by introducing a virtual tour using virtual reality to cope with this challenging situation. This paper presents a description related to the Chulalongkorn University memorial hall in terms of 3D models through interactions in a virtual reality world, in which users gain in-depth experience and knowledge about the history of the Thai Royal and the Chulalongkorn University. Both the internal and external of the Chulalongkorn University Memorial Hall building are reproduced in 3D models, including furniture and belongings in the hall, for simulating the entire Chulalongkorn University Memorial Hall building. In addition to visiting the historical objects in the virtual museum, these objects are interactable with multimedia descriptions which are text, images, videos, and audio commentary. It makes visitors enjoy the ambiance while visiting the virtual Chulalongkorn University Memorial Hall. In addition, it is also the preservation of valuable cultural and historical knowledge resources. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
Indonesia experienced a COVID-19 pandemic starting in 2020. Limited mobility impacts various sectors, including tourism. Alian Butterfly Park is one of those affected. Alternatives were made to attract visitors, such as developing Augmented Reality applications to educate visitors about the new normal. Previous research developed a similar application, namely butterfly education with Augmented Reality technology, but its implementation still uses markers. It makes the user have to visit in person. This research improves the previous application. The improvement such as adding the interaction in AR butterfly life cycle, a virtual tour to collect butterflies, and the AR object is developed markerless. The application is developed using the agile development method. The application that has been developed is tested on the target user of the application. Testing is done by giving a black box testing. The test method is carried out by the black box testing method on 3 students. From the tests carried out, from a total of 25 test scenarios, there are 23 successful test scenarios and 2 test scenarios that fail due to bugs. The success value of the entire test scenario is 92% and the bugs found are 156 only affect the appearance of the application and do not affect the application critically. In addition, 2 scenarios are successful but are given special note due to environmental factors that can affect the results of the test. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Tourism has a substantial impact on the economy of different regions of the world such as Latin America, however due to the health crisis generated by COVID-19 this sector has been one of the most affected, for this reason, different investigations have been carried out focused on solving the problems generated by the pandemic. Therefore, it has become necessary to implement new technological alternatives that allow promoting alternative tourism;for example, take virtual tours of different tourist attractions with the help of virtual or augmented reality. In this article we present a proposal for a virtual reality application focused on promoting tourism in Peru using a user-centered design. To make this proposal, an analysis of tourism in Peru was carried out, analyzing the impact of the pandemic in Peru and the most visited attractions in the city of Arequipa to select the scenarios to be virtualized. An important aspect of the proposed is the creation of a user-centered design, for which a set of functions focused on users was proposed, such as the use of a map to select the tourist attractions to visit, showing updated information of the tourist attractions, the use of multiple methods of movement in virtual reality environments and a camera that allows taking pictures when navigating the virtual scenario. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has enforced governments across the world to impose social restrictions on the movement of people and confined them to their homes to avoid the spread of the disease. This not only forbids them from leaving their homes but also greatly reduces their physical activities. This situation has brought attention to virtual technologies such as virtual tours or telepresence robots. While these technologies allow people to remotely participate in activities, it does not address the problem of reduction in physical activities due to the pandemic. In this paper, we propose a telepresence robotic system driven by the user's gait to provide an immersive virtual walking experience in remote locations. To this end, we developed a control interface consisting of an automated treadmill that adjusts its speed to the user's pace automatically. This interface is used to control an avatar robot that sends a 360-degree live image back to the user for visual feedback. We conducted an evaluation experiment to compare the experience using the proposed system in two different conditions to that of regular walking. The results indicated that the proposed system gives an immersive and realistic virtual walking experience while demanding physical effort from the user. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The pandemic caused by COVID 19 has generated crowds of people, this becomes a critical point that leads to a safe contagion. And it is for this reason that the idea of a virtual tour was born so that people can get to know the physical facilities of a Higher Education Institution (HEI) through a virtual environment. Universidad Tecnológica Israel (UISRAEL), does not have a digital space where its different areas can be appreciated by means of a 3D virtual tour. In this sense, this work presents the development of a 3D model, offering the user a digital interaction of the physical space from his home on his computer. The main benefit is that the user can get to know the facilities in an almost real way, generating a sense of orientation. This work has given way to a future virtual community at UISRAEL, making it possible to diversify and face the new challenges that virtualization brings with it. It will not only be a new means of information and communication, but also a space for interaction, entertainment and learning. All this leaves the basis for an application that in the future could develop more functionalities and be used in other research projects. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
In tourism, virtual tours are one of the latest promotional trends utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in keeping potential tourists saturated and interested in visiting the tourist attractions when the 'new normal' conditions become stable. Furthermore, virtual tours are also a part of historical conservation for cultural-heritage tourism. This research aims to design a virtual cultural-heritage tour route in the Kesawan area of Medan city, make widely promoted virtual tour videos, and evaluate the quality of virtual tourism by arousing interest in prospective tourists to visit the cultural-heritage area of Medan city. Descriptive qualitative design and quantitative regression methods are adopted in this research. Qualitative descriptive and qualitative methods were used to explain the trips and measure the impact of virtual tours in the city of Medan, especially the Kesawan district as the research area. The first result showed the design of a virtual tour starting from the itinerary planning process, taking pictures, editing, and publishing on YouTube media. It was also observed that the published cultural-heritage attracts potential travelers to visit and physically experience the tourist attractions. Moreover, the virtual tour design will be enriched with the addition of English subtitles to obtain a largeraudience. © 2022 WITPress. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The virtual visits to cultural heritage sites have significantly increased due to the Coronavirus pandemic and related restrictions on face-to-face visits to historical cultural sites. Many people visit these sites to get acquainted with the culture of the past, researchers to access original and primary documents, and experts to manage information and adopt decision-making policies. In Iran, there is no virtual museum with the capability of displaying its cultural heritage. Thus, the present study aims to present how an online virtual museum can be created in a simple and low-cost way to integrate tangible and intangible cultural heritage documents. This virtual museum integrates the virtual tours of historical monuments, 3D models of museum objects, images, and videos introducing cultural heritage objects. Moreover, with all types of data stored on it, the museum can be useful for the public, researchers, and experts in various fields, improving cultural heritage conservation. Finally, a more comprehensive approach is proposed to digitally integrate cultural heritage documents. This approach can be applied to other countries with common concerns.
ABSTRACT
The arts and education fields recognize the importance of museums and art galleries as not only buildings that house hundreds, often thousands, of specialized objects, artworks, research, and conservation but rather as institutions sharing the history of people and their environment, thus they play a substantive role in modern society. For art students, practitioners, and hobbyists, these institutions are often visited to provide inspiration and practice, although the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact. National lockdowns and restrictions, and social distancing measures meant museums and art galleries underwent mandated temporary closures, and socially distanced specified visitor routes often meant onsite art practice was no longer permitted. This exploratory pictorial takes a first-person research method to present a collection of reflections, experiences, and example artworks by facilitators of an art practice group that moved from on-site to online practice during the pandemic. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
Various policies regarding the application of information and communication technology are one form of effort to realize efficient and effective information delivery, one of the institutions or agencies that implement information and communication technology policies is an educational institution. When technology is developing, especially communication technology along with the presence of the COVID-19 Pandemic. In this regard, to provide the best information is also felt by the National Development University 'Veteran' East Java in introducing the situation and condition of the campus by implementing a Virtual Campus Tour. The purpose of this study was to determine the factors that influence the acceptance of the virtual tour of UPN 'Veteran' Jawa Timur based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) model. This study uses proportionate stratified random sampling with a total of 266 respondents who are active students at UPN 'Veteran' Jawa Timur. Based on the results of the analysis, it was found that the factors that influence user behavior in using the virtual tour of UPN 'Veteran' Jawa Timur on an ongoing basis are factors of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude toward using, and usability with significant results on the intention to use the UPN 'Veteran' Jawa Timur virtual tour. While the factor that most influences the behavior of users to accept Virtual Tour of UPN 'Veteran' Jawa Timur is the usability factor, this is because usability has the largest path coefficient value, which is 0.714 compared to other variables. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Many argue that experience plays a significant role in learning. However, previous research has shown that experience alone does not necessarily produce learning. This study describes the application of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle (experiencing, reflecting, thinking and acting) as a framework to design assignments for an English for Tourism Industry course at a private university in Japan. The scope of the study was to ensure students a firsthand tourism experience through active participation in virtual tours and events during emergency remote teaching due to COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to explore the implications such an approach may have on students’ learning, in acquiring new knowledge and reflecting on its further use. Through the use of free virtual tours available online, students completed three assignments over a 15-week semester. Each assignment included a different type of virtual activity: (1) a tour of a UNESCO World Heritage Site using Google Earth, (2) an online event, museum exhibition or concert, and (3) a walking tour of a major world city using 360° interactive video. Analysis of the collected data, in form of students’ assignments, revealed how the implementation of such an approach not only allowed for various realizations about the perceived usefulness and benefits of virtual tours, but also motivated students themselves to think more about the use of virtual tours in the tourism industry beyond COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The museum visit is having a crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic. SMBII Museum in Palembang has a remarkable decrease of visitors up to 90%. A strategy is needed to increase museum visits and enable educational and tourism roles in a pandemic situation. This paper evaluates the machine learning model for exhibition recommendations given to visitors through virtual tour applications. Exploring unfamiliar museum exhibitions to visitors through virtual museum applications will be tedious. If virtual collections are ancient and do not display any interest, they will quickly lead to boredom and reluctance to explore virtual museums. For this reason, an effective method is needed to provide suggestions or recommendations that meet the interests of visitors based on the profiles of museum visitors, making it easier for visitors to find exciting exhibition rooms for learning and tourism. Machine learning has proven its effectiveness for predictions and recommendations. This study evaluates several machine learning classifiers for exhibition recommendations and development of virtual tour applications that applied machine learning classifiers with the best performance based on the model evaluation. The experimental results show that the KNN model performs best for exhibition recommendations with cross-validation accuracy = 89.09% and F-Measure = 90.91%. The SUS usability evaluation on the exhibition recommender feature in the virtual tour application of SMBII museum shows average score of 85.83. The machine learning-based recommender feature usability is acceptable, making it easy and attractive for visitors to find an exhibition that might match their interests. © 2022. All Rights Reserved.
ABSTRACT
In recent years, with the remarkable development in game engines, virtual reality (VR) technologies, which immerse users inside a synthetic environment, became very popular and were increasingly integrated into the visualisation of geospatial data. In the Covid-19 pandemic, restricting people's mobility, the interest in VR visits was rapidly increased. In the scope of a scientific research project, a three dimensional (3D) virtual tour for Gebze Technical University Campus was generated by integrating very high resolution unmanned air vehicle (UAV) data into a virtual environment utilizing Unity game engine. Regarding high geolocation accuracy and spatial resolution, low cost, short processing time, and 3D realistic model generation performance, UAV data is largely demanded in varied scientific and commercial applications. In this study, the campus area was collected with 2.18 cm ground sampling distance (GSD) from 80 m flight altitude using 20 MegaPixel UAV digital camera. The UAV data was processed by Agisoft Metashape, structure from motion (SFM) based image matching software, and then high-quality 3D textured models were generated. The aerial imagery was oriented by ground control points (GCPs), carefully distributed in the study area. The geometric accuracy of the image orientation was calculated as ±8 mm (∼0.4 pixels). For virtual reality integration, first, the 3D textured models derived from UAV data were imported into the Unity game engine. After that, optimization techniques including occlusion culling, space subdivision were applied to the models to prevent problems that may arise due to transferring high poly models to game engines. Thus, objects and textures have been transferred with the highest resolution to achieve a realistic virtual experience. For creating a more detailed and realistic environment, 3D models of trees, lighting poles, benches, arbours, and information panels were added to the model using available assets in Unity. Also, the metadata about buildings (e.g. building name, floor area and the number of staff) were added to the 3D building models. Finally, a player with a first-person camera is implemented for the virtual tour in the integrated 3D models. In this study, the encountered problems and recommended solutions for creating a virtual campus are presented. © ACRS 2021.All right reserved.
ABSTRACT
The Tour of Flanders, a classic outdoor cycling event that opens the cycling season, was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a suitable replacement was created in its place, intended to offer people some solace during this lockdown period during which most recreational activities were suspended. This paper explains how the team managed to create an exciting mixed-reality (MR) racing event within a short period of time, given the limits of all social distance rules. It provides insights into how the real riders raced through a virtual landscape and how the viewers got to see this at home. This cloud-based production was performed exclusively with standard office IT equipment and well-known internet technologies. From idea to execution, the clock was ticking: the entire project was to be completed within a matter of days. © 2002 Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Inc.
ABSTRACT
With the spread of COVID-19, many cultural and artistic institutions around the world have been forced to temporally close doors to protect attendees from the transmission risks. These measures have instigated curators and creators to explore alternative ways to showcase artworks through the digitization of collections, thus allowing the general public to access art online during social isolation. This work, therefore, describes the digitization process of a Brazilian art gallery which adopted the 3D virtual tour format to grant access to its art exhibitions in both Web and virtual reality (VR) formats. Both the development process of the virtual gallery and its usability evaluation with participants of different backgrounds are presented. Although some suggestions for technical improvement were pointed out, preliminary results showed that there was general acceptance in using the technology as a functional digital resource to access artistic exhibitions remotely. © 2021 Association for Computing Machinery.
ABSTRACT
This research presents a virtual tour performed on the oppidum of Ulaca, one of the most relevant archaeological sites of the Iberian Peninsula during the Late Iron Age (ca. 400–50 BC). Beyond the clear benefits of the tool to the interpretation, dissemination, and knowledge of the mentioned archaeological site and its surroundings, the novelty of this research is the implementation of the platform in alternative scenarios and purposes. In this way, the present work verifies how the access to multi-source and spatially geolocated information in the same tool (working as a geospatial database) allows the promotion of cross-sectional investigations in which different specialists intervene. This peculiarity is also considered useful to promote tourism with an interest beyond the purely historical/archaeological side. Likewise, the possibility of storing and managing a large amount of information in different formats facilitates the investigation in the contexts of excavations and archaeological or environmental works. In this sense, the use of this kind of tool for the study of cultural landscapes is especially novel. In order to better contextualize the potential of the virtual tour presented here, an analysis about the challenges and possibilities of implementing this tool in environments such as the Ulaca oppidum is performed. The selected site stands out for: (i) being in a unique geological, environmental and ecological context, allowing us to appreciate how human beings have modified the landscape over time;(ii) presenting numerous visible archaeological remains with certain conservation problems;and (iii) not having easy access for visitors.
ABSTRACT
Studies point that smartphones show an important role in the improvement of museum visitors experience. Mobile devices have become the main tool available for travellers, which enables the diffusion of augmented reality solutions through this channel. Based on that, a virtual guide prototype was developed to enhance the museum visitors experience inside a famous attraction from Foz do Iguaçu, the Ecomuseu, constructed with the objective to show the work of Itaipu's hydroelectric power plant and the history regarding the region occupied by its reservoir. The developed application inserts virtual elements in different locations of the museum. Whenever such elements are "captured", they tell the visitor information about what is being exhibited so the perception of the visitor and knowledge absorption can be improved. To validate the proposed solution, we tested the app with 15 different users. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we adapted the app and performed the evaluation over the virtual tour of the same museum, which is available online. For the sake of our knowledge, this is the first time an augmented reality application is evaluated over a virtual representation of a museum. Despite the difficulties imposed by the current context, the feedback from the tested users was very positive. © 2021 ACM.