Cultural Engagement in Virtual Heritage Environments with Inbuilt Interactive Evaluation Mechanisms

My initial premise is that virtual heritage environments currently do not provide a sense of ‘cultural’ engagement, and, secondly, that is it important to fulfill these needs. Indeed, how can we develop virtual environments for cultural applications that successfully evoke a sense of engagement or immersion? This paper suggests that the above issue has been indirectly addressed by entertainment software design. A proposed solution to the issue of cultural presence is thus to apply the interactive mechanisms used in games (social agents, maps, dynamic environments, levels of interaction constraint, and task-based artefactual use) to virtual heritage environments. The hypothesis is that the resulting environment will allow for a more culturally immersive learning environment. Virtual environments also often lack adequate feedback mechanisms. A proposed secondary solution is that designers and researchers of virtual environment can use the above interactive mechanisms for the evaluation of user engagement without simultaneously interrupting the user’s feeling of engagement.