A collaborative authoring tool for cultural heritage in eXtended reality.

Abstract

The prototyping and development of a cultural heritage exhibition or application can be a collaborative process between a cultural heritage institution and a cultural heritage developer. Extended reality (XR) and remote collaboration have the potential to enhance this process. XR can enable a higher level of visualisation of the final product, allowing for faster prototyping and development times, and can allow the exhibition to be built directly within the intended space. Remote collaboration can allow for geographically displaced users to meet together and collaborate using online communication platforms. By combining authoring in XR with remote collaboration, users can meet within a shared virtual recreation of physical space and collaborate together to prototype and develop a cultural heritage exhibition. In this paper, a Collaborative Authoring Tool for Cultural Heritage in eXtended Reality (CATCH-XR) is presented. CATCH-XR allows for two or more users to remotely meet in a recreation of the host’s physical space to prototype and develop a cultural heritage exhibition and import assets through a content management system. Alongside CATCH-XR, a worked example of an exhibition showcasing Irish history, created using CATCH-XR, is also presented.