White bastion fortress has been standing in defense of Sarajevo since medieval period. In time it was changing together with various dominations upon the city. 4D virtual presentation aims to display the historical development of this cultural heritage object through digital storytelling combined with interactive 3D models of the Bastion in various time periods. These models contain digitized findings from the site and their 3D reconstructions. In this paper we present a new method of interactive digital storytelling for cultural heritage and its initial user evaluation.

Understanding the past is one of the key factors of human culture. Cultural heritage contributes to the preservation of collective memory. It is difficult to imagine the original appearance of monuments while observing their archeological remains. Digital technologies are an efficient tool for visualization and multimedia presentation of cultural heritage. This paper describes the use of these technologies through the workflow of the White bastion 4D visualization project, from collecting information, through 3D modeling and texturing to interactive web implementation using the most advanced web 3D technologies. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of each technology for this particular purpose.

Virtual presentation of cultural heritage has shown a great potential in preservation of collective memory. The level of immersion that the visitor feels in a virtual environment is one of the key factors for the quality of his experience. Terrains are the most authentic elements of cultural heritage sites, as they rarely have been significantly changed through time. In this paper we explore the use of LiDAR based terrains in interactive virtual cultural heritage applications, considering the advantages and drawbacks of this approach. Our case study is the virtual presentation of the Early Christian Basilica in Cim near Mostar, created for the interactive exhibition “Keys to Rome”.

Isa bey Ishakovic built in 1462 a tekke, public kitchen and accommodation complex in Sarajevo. It was dedicated to travelers and Mevlevi dervishes. Today there is a road and gasoline station at this location. The goal of this paper is to bring these objects back to public memory using interactive storytelling. 3D models of objects are incorporated in a real-time virtual environment. The surrounding terrain is constructed using a fractal terrain generation method. The user is guided through the environment by interactive story. The story presents each object and its purpose. Dervish ritual that was performed inside the tekke is presented by interactive computer animation. User evaluation shows the levels of immersion and presence felt by the visitors through qualitative user experience methodology. The user study results will prove that the interactive storytelling is a better form of cultural heritage virtual presentation than the non-interactive form (movie).

Summary form only given. We present a method how to create locally and globally interesting stories for virtual museums in a relatively short time. The local interestingness is understood in a Koestlerian way (AH, AHA, HAHA bisociation effects). Global interestingness is achieved by discovering, within the given unique material, options for relating unrelated contexts, internal poetry and/or change of the narration mode. The craft of storytelling resulted in five short movies, completed during the South-East European Virtual Heritage School: Digital Storytelling for Virtual Museums. These intereStories“ are intentionally aimed at overcoming multiple limitations of backtelling, frequent in virtual museums. The five themes include Bosnian blues Sevdah, fate of Sephardic Jews, existing and nonexisting urban area, and traditional Bosnian coffee. The stories were coauthored by 15 beginners storytellers in groups (24 authors) in 5 days alongside with the 12 lectures on theory and narrative case studies from V-must network good practice. Besides the brainstormings, speed-up focused brainwritting feedback was provided twice: once for preexistent stories, second for betaversions. The final creations were produced in Adobe Premiere Pro and published at YouTube.

The cross-modal interaction between vision and other senses is a key part of how we perceive the real world. Significant stimulation to hearing, sense of smell, taste or touch can reduce the cognitive resources the brain is able to allocate to sight, and thus limit what the Human Visual System (HVS) can actually perceive at that moment. Selective rendering is able to exploit such knowledge of the HVS, to render those parts of a virtual environment a viewer is attending to at a high quality and the rest of the scene at a much lower quality, and thus at a substantially reduced rendering time, without the viewer being aware of this quality difference. This paper investigates how the presence of the modalities of sound, smell and ambient temperature in a virtual environment significantly affects a viewer's ability to perceive the quality of the graphics used for that environment. Experiments were run with a total of 356 participants to determine the graphics quality thresholds across the different cross-modal interactions. The results revealed a significant effect of strong perfume, high temperature and audio noise on perceived rendering quality. Under given conditions, this particular combination of modalities can be thus exploited when rendering virtual environments, to substantially reduce rendering time without any loss in the user's perception of delivered visual quality.

Virtual museums enable Internet users to explore museum collections online. The question is how to enhance the viewer's experience and learning in such environments. In the Sarajevo Survival Tools virtual museum we introduced a new concept of interactive digital storytelling that will enable the visitors to explore the virtual exhibits - objects from the siege of Sarajevo - guided by a digital story. This way the virtual museum visitors will learn about the context of the displayed objects and be motivated to explore all of them. In this paper we present the virtual environment we developed and our experience with it. The results from three empirical studies we conducted, indicate the positive influence of digital storytelling and sound effects on visitors' perceptual response, resulting in increased motivation and enjoyment, and more effective information conveyance.

Bosnia and Herzegovina always has been a place where the East meets the West. Over 1000 years, different cultures, religions and civilizations have left their remains in this small country in Western Balkans. Despite all wars and tragic destructions, today in the heart of Sarajevo one can find mosques, Catholic and Orthodox churches and Jewish synagogues next to each other and people of different nations and religions living together in mutual respect and friendship. Multiethnic spirit of Bosnia and Herzegovina lives through its cultural heritage. Therefore our task is to ensure its presentation and preservation using Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). So far researchers have achieved significant results by creating several virtual museums. In this paper we will present the Museum of Bosnian Traditional Objects, Digital Catalogue of Stecaks and the Virtual Museum of Sarajevo Assassination, giving an overview of the process of creating virtual environments from multiple data sources based on various 3D digitization technologies: some based on traditional 3D modeling, other based on laser scanning or photogrametric techniques.

Virtual cultural heritage research in Bosnia and Herzegovina results with a number of virtual reconstructions and virtual museums (VM). Virtual Museums are online multimedia applications using various digital content and implementation technologies. This paper presents an overview of these technologies used in our projects and their efficiency from the user's point of view.

Bosnia and Herzegovina always has been a place where the East meets the West. Over 1000 years, different cultures, religions and civilizations have left their remains in this small country in Western Balkans. Despite all wars and tragic destructions, today in the heart of Sarajevo one can find mosques, Catholic and Orthodox churches and Jewish synagogues next to each other and people of different nations and religions living together in mutual respect and friendship. Multiethnic spirit of Bosnia and Herzegovina lives through its cultural heritage. Therefore our task is to ensure its presentation and preservation using Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). So far researchers have achieved significant results by creating several virtual museums. In this paper we will present the Museum of Bosnian Traditional Objects, Digital Catalogue of Stecaks and the Virtual Museum of Sarajevo Assassination, giving an overview of the process of creating virtual environments from multiple data sources based on various 3D digitization technologies: some based on traditional 3D modeling, other based on laser scanning or photogrametric techniques.