Journal of Cultural Heritage 22 (2016) 984–991

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Original article

DynaMus: A fully dynamic 3D virtual museum framework

Chairi Kiourt ∗ , Anestis Koutsoudis , George Pavlidis
“Athena” Research Centre, University Campus at Kimmeria, GR-67100 Xanthi, Greece

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The evolving technologies of the game engines and the Web have reached a level of maturity that enables
Received 19 March 2016 them to contribute significantly to the long-celebrated blending of culture and education with gaming. In
Accepted 10 June 2016 this work, we present DynaMus, an innovative fully dynamic Web-based virtual museum framework that
Available online 11 July 2016
relies entirely on users’ creativity and on the exploitation of the rich content in distributed Web resources.
DynaMus is able to connect to popular repositories, such as Europeana and Google, and retrieve content
Keywords: that can be used in creating virtual exhibitions. It exploits modern Web technologies such as open linked
Dynamic
data in an attempt to move towards the semantic Web by exploiting the abundance in data availability.
Virtual museum
Virtual exhibition
DynaMus provides a complete authoring interface, in which anyone can easily create customised virtual
Game-based learning exhibitions, while guaranteeing an engaging experience by relying on modern game engine technologies.
Distributed data The concept easily connects to educational settings as has been illustrated by case studies, one of which
Cultural resources is presented in this paper.
© 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

1. Research aims computer game development platforms (also known as game

engines) contribute towards a continuous release of serious games
Several research and development efforts have already created (SG) in diverse fields including entertainment, cultural heritage,
a significant amount of works relating to virtual museums and education, artificial intelligence, sociology, military and health sys-
exhibitions. In most cases these efforts produced a very specific tems [1]. In a sense, SGs can be considered as an efficient approach
outcome, that is, a virtual museum or exhibition for a particular for blending domain specific activities, like in cultural heritage and
cultural stakeholder. Just a few works (really less than a handful) education, with gaming. By utilising contemporary visualisation
envisioned more than such specific applications, aiming towards and simulation technologies SGs enhance the user’s experience
generic systems to encompass more than one stakeholder or appli- through photorealistic interactive environments [2]. This form of
cation, which, mostly, make use of proprietary technologies. To the stimulation is considered to be one of the primary factors for suc-
knowledge of the authors of this paper, still, there is not a com- cessful user engagement, playing, at the same time, the role of the
pletely generic system that would enable users to easily and freely driving force that promotes concentration in the activity process
build a virtual environment (a small virtual world) in which to cre- and user encouragement for further self-improvement. Stimula-
ate and publish virtual exhibitions, even more, with content that tion is largely considered by the scientific community as a desired
is already online on the Web. DynaMus brings this concept to life mechanism to achieve the desired results [3].
by providing a totally generic, easy to use, technological frame- Gaming for educational purposes is a significant and active
work for VR authoring and open linked data connection that is research domain [4–7]. This has taken either the form of game-
accessible even by children as has been illustrated by case stud- based learning or serious gaming. As shown in Fig. 1, gamification
ies. in this sense is the result of serious games based on learning, the
content and game design.
2. Introduction The importance of playing has been emphasized in many studies
from various domains. According to Brown and Vaughan [4], play-
The continuous development of Web services and computer ing is an archetypical activity that arises from primordial biological
infrastructures complemented by the increasing availability of structures existing before the conscience or the capacity for speech;
it is not something a person decides to do. According to Nichol-
son [5,6], gamification is nothing more than the use of specific
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +306949079760. game design approaches and techniques in various environments,
E-mail addresses: chairiq@ceti.gr (C. Kiourt), akoutsou@ceti.gr (A. Koutsoudis), in order to attract people in problem solving and to enhance their
gpavlid@ceti.gr (G. Pavlidis). contribution.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.culher.2016.06.007
1296-2074/© 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
 C. Kiourt et al. / Journal of Cultural Heritage 22 (2016) 984–991 985

Fig. 1. The complex multi-dimensional world of Gamification.

In this paper, we present DynaMus (Dynamic Museum), a novel prehistoric heritage site. Anderson et al. [15] reviewed the state-
fully dynamic Web-based SG-based framework that is primarily of-the-art of theories, methods and technologies utilised by SGs
focused on creating and browsing interactive virtual exhibitions. as cultural heritage promotion tools by showing case studies that
It relies on the rich content of Web-based resources that are not exploit such technologies. Furthermore, works like Bellotti et al.
only limited to the cultural heritage domain. Thus, DynaMus fol- [16] focus on a generalisation of the task-based learning theory in
lows the current trends of virtual museum dynamic environments applications using smart mobile devices. In addition, Koutsoudis
by allowing the integration of content derived from any domain and Pavlidis [17] proposed a novel approach for navigating within
using URIs. DynaMus enables users to create their virtual exhi- complex cultural scenes by exploiting content-based retrieval
bitions by using Web-based cross-platform gaming technologies. descriptors. Koutsoudis et al. [18] proposed a content-based navi-
The creation of the virtual environment in each user exhibition gation framework for a virtual museum, based on metadata that
is totally user-driven and it is enabled through a point-and-click describe the exhibits and thus providing a semantic similarity-
and drag-and-drop interface that does not require programming based navigation. In [19] a SG is proposed based on scenarios
skills. We created case studies using this framework and tested it derived from the cultural heritage domain and attempts to enrich
in different settings in order to evaluate the functionalities and user the player’s knowledge by spreading a mystery in ancient times. In
adoption and concluded that DynaMus offers a rather user-friendly a recent work [20], a multi-user framework for virtual exhibitions
environment and a functionality that could contribute towards the that adapts to visitors’ preferences has been proposed. In [21,22],
coupling culture and education through gaming paradigms. an interactive museum for painting exhibitions with dynamic open
The paper is organised as follows: Section 3 provides a brief data content was introduced as a cultural and educational tool that
review of related works and underlying concepts; Section 4 focuses on user-driven exhibitions.
introduces to the DynaMus system architecture and structure, The Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects (ARCO)
accompanied by a case study that produced interesting usage [23,24,26] was among the predominant efforts towards a dynamic
results and evaluation. The paper concludes by summarising Dyna- virtual museum system accompanied by a 3D digitisation tech-
Mus advantages and pointing out future work. nique to provide museums a framework to produce and Exhibit 3D
digital replicas of their artefacts. It was based on X-VRML technolo-
3. Virtual museums, learning and gaming gies [25] and enabled the development of dynamic database-driven
virtual scenes composed of 3D exhibits. The system was designed
Since the early 1990s when really appealing computer game to provide museum curators ways to develop and manage 3D vir-
graphics made their first appearances, game engines started to tual galleries and 2D multimedia representations. The exhibition
be used as tools in many scientific fields [1,8,9]. In this Section, management was performed through a Web-based application that
we present an indicative selection of important published works allowed curators to handle digital exhibits along with their docu-
related to virtual museums, exhibitions and game-based learning, mentation metadata. The information of the exhibition is stored in
concepts that are intertwined with DynaMus. the databases of the ARCO systems [23]. ARCO was evaluated as
The notion of virtual museums and exhibitions has been an Augmented Reality Interface (ARIF) [27] by focusing on the user
introduced as an approach to overcome the limitations of the phys- experience in relation to the technologies of ARCO.
ical space and to provide a vivid experience to remote visitors [10]. In 2005, Lepouras and Vassilakis [28] presented the concept of
An overview of virtual museum technologies is presented in [11]. creating virtual museums focused primarily on educational content
Numerous works utilise various technologies to provide solutions and related services by using a game engine. This virtual exhibition
for history teaching and learning, or to enhance actual museum space took advantage of the high visual quality of modern game
visits. Pavlidis et al. [12] proposed a Web-based 3D digital replicas engines. Lepouras and Vassilakis also conducted a user acceptance
management system with a dynamic virtual exhibition showroom. study of their virtual museum prototype, which demonstrated
In addition, in [13] a more advanced framework for digital muse- promising results. Sookhanaphibarn and Thawonmas presented a
ums has been presented, where a non-photorealistic digital replica 3D virtual museum developed in the Second Life 3D world engine.
of a real museum is used to demonstrate educational activities The virtual museum was equipped with an innovative intelligent
rather its actual exhibition, aiming at increasing the museum’s guidance system that was able to provide a customised navigation
visitors. In [14] an interactive SG is used for the promotion of a route based on the visitor’s preferences [29]. The route generation
986 C. Kiourt et al. / Journal of Cultural Heritage 22 (2016) 984–991

was based on tracking the movements of the visitor within the Table 1
A simple three-level comparison of various features in popular game engines.
3D environment. The system automatically produced a user pro-
file adjustment module, which was later used to provide a set of Feature Unity3D CryENGINE Unreal engine
relevant options. Additionally, the museum’s content could also
be personalised based on the visitor’s comments. Papastamatiou Friendly to User

et al. [30] presented a dynamic Web-based 3D e-shop system for Components

commercial use, offering a WYSIWYG graphical user interface. The Object development
system was build using the Unity3D game engine, whereas the
GUI
content and the metadata were loaded from external XML files.
Through the system’s GUI, the user was able to manage not only the Real time FX
e-shop content but also the on-line buyers purchases and activities. Particles
A Web-based HTML editor allowed administrators to add textual
AI
information, links to Web resources, images and other multimedia
content. Furthermore, Sillaurren and Aguirrezabal [31] presented Physics
3DPublish, a content management system that was also developed Animation Systems
in Unity3D game engine and allowed the generation of dynamic 3D
Programming
exhibitions. The aim of this project was to create a tool for curators
that enabled them to manage 3D environments of virtual museums. OpenGL

The system supported JPEG, PNG, AVI, PPT and PDF file formats to 2D Games
be used as exhibition elements. A Web-based management tool 3D Formats
allowed curators to upload their content to a dedicated file server.
Tools Integration
The exhibitions were stored in XML format, which are stored in
the same server while every time an exhibition was loaded all its Assets
elements were also reloaded. Support
Nowadays, a common approach and trend in modern virtual Availability Free or 4500 $ full pack 9.90 $ monthly 5% royalty
world applications for various domains is to adopt the technol-
ogy of game development, the game engines; since a game engine
is behind the development of the proposed DynaMus framework, specific data and guidance by stakeholders, some of them using
a brief reference to the technology and a simple comparison of game engine or virtual reality technologies. None of these, though,
contemporary available game engines is included in the following or any other published works (to our knowledge) addresses the
paragraphs. concept of an entirely open technological framework, totally dis-
Game engines are integrated software suites that efficiently engaged from any stakeholder or presentation scenario, easy to use
use 3D rendering pipelines, special data-structures and speed- and based on open linked data, that is able to support the creation of
up techniques for visualising texture mapped 3D objects, scenes mini virtual worlds and to populate them with Web-based cultural
and 3D worlds in real-time with modern graphics and interac- and educational content, readily published on the Web, without
tion capacities [8]. The selection of game engines for building requiring technical skills. This is exactly what drove the creation of
dynamic, realistic, virtual environments was guided by the numer- DynaMus.
ous possibilities and advantages offered by modern game engines
[21,22,28,32], not limited to the game engines in this study. Game 4. DynaMus: a novel user-centric virtual museum
engines are being extensively tested for usability and performance framework
due to the high demand of the contemporary games. The game
engine and computer game developers provide components, algo- The scope of this work was to develop a fully dynamic inter-
rithms, tools, guides and source code, so that their users can active virtual environment as an open technological framework to
efficiently create new applications. An extensive user support pro- allow the easy creation of virtual museums and exhibitions using
vided by large game development communities makes them even distributed Web content, without the need of any predefined sce-
more attractive development platforms. Most of the game engine narios. In order to be able to implement such a system, open data
functionalities are managed and exploited via a GUI for the con- technologies had to be integrated in order to be available through
venience of developers, providing a more efficient development the 3D virtual environment provided by the game engine. Unity
framework when compared with virtual environment toolkits that game engine was selected due to its low cost, rich development tool
often require additional effort to provide functionalities such as arsenal, user-friendliness, cross-platform delivery, and powerful
user interaction [33], avatar behaviours, collision detection and scripting and database connectivity capabilities.
management, audio management, avatar-based virtual environ- Fig. 2 depicts an abstract overview of the functionalities sup-
ment interactions, embodied autonomous agents and many other ported by DynaMus, which can be considered as a 3D content
properties [28,32]. Most of the modern game engines enable cross- management system (3D-CMS) that offers both back-end and
platform development. There is a wide selection of 3D game engines front-end content management functionalities. The current imple-
available for potential use [34]. In Table 1 we summarize our com- mentation of DynaMus supports exhibitions in the form of:
parison of some of the most popular contemporary game engines,
Unity [23,35], CryEngine [9,36] and Unreal [9,37]; we have collected • 2D images, which are being mapped onto flat surfaces that sim-
all major advantages and disadvantages regarding these game ulate painting frames;
engines as discussed in [9,22,23,31,35–37] and compiled them into • 3D models, which can be easily manipulated and placed in the
a single table for easy comparison, in which a simple three-level virtual environment of the exhibition1 .
rating for each feature has been followed.
Apparently, we are in an era that a connection of all those tech-
nologies and approaches is being explored. Most of the advanced 1
Currently, there is a limitation requiring that each 3D object is described
previous works relating to virtual museums focused in provid- by OBJ files, with a maximum of 10,000 vertices. This limitation is imposed by
ing engaging user experiences within specific frameworks, using the Unity game engine, to serve as a guarantee for smooth rendering and fast
 C. Kiourt et al. / Journal of Cultural Heritage 22 (2016) 984–991 987

Fig. 2. General technological framework of the DynaMus.

Both exhibition visits and exhibition management are per- services that respond with structured string-formatted data. Fig. 4
formed through a unified GUI in an attempt to provide a WYSIWYG depicts the process of the development and visualisation of the
intuitive environment. DynaMus offers user-based access. Hence, elements found in an exhibition. The 3D object building process is
user registration is required before using the framework. Each shown on the left side of Fig. 4. The operation begins by providing
registered user is able to browse and visit published exhibitions the digital resource remote location (URL or URI). The underlying
and to become an exhibitor-administrator of one or more exhibi- algorithm parses and analyses all the related files (Step 1) and ini-
tions. At the current implementation, all exhibitions are accessible tiates the real time 3D mesh generation (Step 2). Subsequently, the
for visiting by all users. The primary 2D image data resources provided UV texture image is mapped on the 3D mesh (Step 3) using
that are already integrated into the framework are Google Images the information stored in the material file that usually accompanies
and cultural content from Europeana (http://www.europeana.eu), the 3D model files. After the generation of the 3D model the user
whereas custom user content is also supported (Fig. 3). There is may annotate it with textual information (Step 4). The interactivity
no limitation in the total number of 3D resources added to the is depicted on Fig. 4 (right side). When a visitor selects an object, a
exhibition as the system only stores a URIs (or URLs) that point pop-up window appears at the bottom of the screen providing the
to remotely stored digital resources. The data interoperability with textual information that accompanies the exhibit.
these resources is guaranteed by the open data technologies that In order for the 3D environment to be more realistic, some
these repositories provide. The data transfer between DynaMus real-time screen space effects such as Ambient Occlusion, Depth of
and the external Web-based resources is being implemented using Field, Antialiasing, Light Mapping and Shadow Rendering are being
the JSON data-interchange format. The overall graph of requests used. These can significantly affect the quality and efficiency of
and data interchange is illustrated in detail as a typical sequence the experience but impose some additional graphics card hard-
diagram in Fig. 3, which depicts both the visitor’s and exhibitor’s ware requirements, which, nowadays, are considered common.
perspective. More specifically, Ambient occlusion [38] is a sophisticated ray trac-
According to this sequence diagram, visitors can browse through ing calculation, which simulates soft global illumination by faking
the available exhibitions or send a request to explore an exhibi- darkness perceived in corners and at mesh intersections, creases,
tion. On the other hand, exhibitors can create a new exhibition or and cracks, where light is diffused (usually) by accumulated dirt
edit an existing one. Exhibition management is also supervised (top and dust. Depth of field [39] is a common post processing effect that
level) by the super administration, responsible for activating new simulates one of the most notable properties of a camera lens: the
exhibitions after performing content compliance verification and limited depth of focus. Antialiasing [40], gives smoother appear-
testing. ance of the graphics based on the difference of coloured areas of
As mentioned before, the data interchange between DynaMus, the image. Light mapping [41], by which point, area, directional and
the Web-based repositories (Google Images, Europeana) and inter- spotlights shine upon every pixel displayed on the screen space.
nal repository (considered as the server-side of the system) are Shadow rendering [38], which is based on the light mapping and
based on JSON technology. For each of the repositories a struc- tries to simulate environment shadows that are associated to the
tured query subsystem was built according to the data exchange light sources. Fig. 5 depicts the difference by using these real-time
requirements. Each query subsystem is able to handle the response effects.
data structures. In addition, the server-side of DynaMus is also
responsible for handling all the user requests triggered through 4.1. The ‘Synthesis Museum’ case study
the 3D virtual environment and related to the development of
the exhibitions’ environment. More specifically, the server-side of In order to objectively evaluate the performance of DynaMus,
DynaMus provides a number of services in the form of PHP requests. we conducted a number of case studies by implementing vari-
This approach enables to perform all communications using string- ous virtual exhibitions in different settings and frameworks (high
parsing functionality. Thus, any user requests are driven through school, science festivals and technology fairs). We present here a
the GUI to the server-side of DynaMus and the server triggers ded- specific case study, which involved the generation of the ‘Synthesis
icated C# scripts that allow posting (POST) string queries to PHP Museum’, a virtual museum that was created for the purposes of
the ‘Synthesis’ Greek National Funded R&D project [42].
The Synthesis project attempted to bridge culture and education
(real-time) response. There are workarounds for this limitation, which are discussed through technology and to provide means for tutors to enhance
in the conclusions. their everyday teaching with alternative approaches that derive
988 C. Kiourt et al. / Journal of Cultural Heritage 22 (2016) 984–991

Fig. 3. Sequence diagram of the basic activities in the DynaMus.

and reuse cultural content as an integral part of their courses. study is available online at http://www.synthesis.thf.gr/portal/
The specific virtual museum consisted of artworks (mainly paint- applications-en/virtual-museum-en/).
ings) of Spyros Papaloukas, an esteemed early 20th century Greek To evaluate the functionality, along with the impact, the adop-
painter. To meet the required specifications of the case study, a tion and user satisfaction on this technology, the system has been
digital replica (3D model) of the Theocharakis Foundation for the given for use to a number of secondary education school pupils,
Fine Arts and Music building was created to host all the exhibitions. teachers and parents. The evaluation was based on a questionnaire
Screenshots of both the interior and the exterior of the 3D model that included questions targeting various aspects of the general
are depicted in Fig. 6. Apparently, in this case we have created the technology adoption, the gamification aspect adoption and the
virtual world that would host the exhibitions and the outcome specific technology impact. Some of the most interesting results
was separately given to users for use and evaluation (this case are being summarized in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8. The results show that,
 C. Kiourt et al. / Journal of Cultural Heritage 22 (2016) 984–991 989

Fig. 4. Workflow for reading and presenting interactive 3D models in DynaMus.

Fig. 5. Real-time screen space effects for enhanced visual realism.

although, the technology adoption and expectation is high and and the pupils/students, the latter, of course, being more exposed
the exposure to it is considered highly positive, there is still some to VR-like environments and technologies.
scepticism on the ability and willingness of the tutors to success- It is evident in Fig. 7 that although there is almost no class-
fully adopt the technology and integrate it in everyday educational room electronic gaming, the prospect of it becoming possible and
practice, which is actually the case. Nevertheless, the adoption of the adoption of DynaMus is highly anticipated. Fig. 8 reveals some
the technology offered by DynaMus is really high by both the tutors of the controversies still in effect, like in the first question, in

Fig. 6. Screenshots of an external and an internal view of the ‘Synthesis’ virtual museum.
990 C. Kiourt et al. / Journal of Cultural Heritage 22 (2016) 984–991

Fig. 7. Dichotomous scaled questions-answers.

Fig. 8. Five-point scaled questions-answers.

which most students do not expect that tutors will be up to the everyone interested in creating virtual 3D environments that
challenge of incorporating DynaMus in the daily practice. The exhibit their own content or content in Web-based repositories. The
intermediate three questions revealed that the experience offered framework is built upon the virtual world paradigm and provides
by DynaMus was highly pleasing, easy to use and joyful, whereas a first person virtual world navigation and content manipulation
the final question revealed the significant differences in the expo- experiences. It can be used to provide cultural heritage content
sure to VR-like environments by the various implicated groups of visualisation coupled with educational activities intertwined with
users. In overall, the evaluation revealed a significant lack in gam- VR technologies, based on game engine software. We presented
ification approaches in education and that DynaMus like similar one of the case studies created with DynaMus technology that
game-based approaches are highly anticipated as considered pos- demonstrated its functionalities and user adoption aspects. We
itive additions to the educational practice. are currently working towards integrating virtual agents to serve
as exhibition guides that will be coupled with artificial intelli-
5. Conclusions gence (AI) to either support natural and personalised visits and
user-defined guided tours, or to build socially trained agent-based
In this paper, we presented DynaMus, a dynamic virtual envi- collaboration between agents and humans. In addition, we are
ronment authoring framework that composes an open system for working on bringing cloud-based storage connectivity to support
 C. Kiourt et al. / Journal of Cultural Heritage 22 (2016) 984–991 991

the user content. Last but not least, we are exploring various [17] A. Koutsoudis, G. Pavlidis, Content-based search and retrieval within complex
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