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”.

Virtual cultural heritage applications, particularly virtual museums, nowadays include various forms of storytelling. Every object, site or artifact is better perceived and understood through the adjoining story. Interactive applications naturally request the storytelling to become interactive as well. This paper describes the concepts of interactive digital storytelling in our virtual museums and cultural heritage presentations and discusses their advantages and drawbacks recognized through user evaluation. We used digital stories not only to introduce visitors with the context and information on the objects, but also to enhance their navigation through virtual environments with purpose of learning and perceiving maximum amount of offered information.

Virtual cultural heritage applications, particularly virtual museums, nowadays include various forms of storytelling. Every object, site or artifact is better perceived and understood through the adjoining story. Interactive applications naturally request the storytelling to become interactive as well. This paper describes the concepts of interactive digital storytelling in our virtual museums and cultural heritage presentations and discusses their advantages and drawbacks recognized through user evaluation. We used digital stories not only to introduce visitors with the context and information on the objects, but also to enhance their navigation through virtual environments with purpose of learning and perceiving maximum amount of offered information.

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.

Abstract. This paper introduces the aims and early activities of Colour and Space in Cultural Heritage (COSCH), an interdisciplinary European network of experts in the latest optical measuring techniques and electronic imaging applied to documentation of artefacts. COSCH is a forum open to organisations, institutions and companies interested in collaboration within the emerging field of precise spectral and spatial imaging techniques, in physical and chemical sciences applied to cultural heritage objects, as well as in research and applications to conservation and art-historical analysis of such objects. COSCH started in November 2012. Funded by COST, an intergovernmental framework for European Cooperation in Science and Technology, COSCH networking activities enable knowledge exchange and coordination of nationally-funded research on a European level with occasional contribution of experts from other countries. Funding has been made available for four years (2012–2016). Participation is open to researchers across a wide range of disciplines, including computer scientists and museum professionals, art historians and academics in heritage-related fields. COSCH is a trans-domain Action (TD1201) of the COST Domain Materials, Physics and Nanosciences (MPNS) which facilitates and promotes innovation in material science. The work of COSCH is defined in the Memorandum of Understanding between the COST Office and the Chairman of COSCH. The Memorandum is available from http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/mpns/Actions/TD1201 alongside the latest progress report and other documents. The scientific work draws on earlier and current research of the participants and is organised around the following areas: spectral and spatial object documentation; algorithms and procedures; analysis and restoration of surfaces and objects of material culture; visualisation of cultural heritage objects and its dissemination. Up-to-date information about COSCH activities, including its scientific and training programmes, abstracts of presentations and a list of participants, can all be found on the Action website at http://www.cosch.info.

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.

Current advancements in handheld computers in terms of hardware, opened the development possibilities for a lot of applications that demand high system performance. The following work focuses on enhancing the integration of augmented reality objects, and proposes improvements over the previous platform [1], such as: exposing the render engine to developers, introducing user interactivity components and optimising 3D objects' database. The major contribution of our work is introducing better object rendering with high frame rate comparing to other commercial and non-commercial AR platforms.

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.

Serious games are becoming increasingly popular in education, science, medicine, religion, engineering, and some other fields. Additionally, serious heritage games, including virtual reconstructions and museums, provide a good environment for a synthesis of serious games and cultural heritage. This may be used for education in the form of edutainment, comprising various techniques, such as storytelling, visual expression of information, interactivity and entertainment \cite{vast09STAR}. This paper demonstrates a new concept of using live virtual guides in a Flash environment for cultural heritage virtual reconstruction. A pilot user study compares another approach using the X3D environment, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of our concept. The introduced results can be easily adopted for serious games development.