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The British Museum is running a trial of virtual reality technology with a view to offering it as a permanent tool to explore its collection.
Families will be invited to navigate a virtual reality Bronze Age roundhouse and interact with 3D scans of objects. In June, London's Natural History Museum also started using VR technology. Both museums are using Samsung Gear VR headsets.
Only visitors aged 13 or over will be allowed to use the headsets in the British Museum. Families with younger children can use a Samsung Galaxy tablet or enter a dome with an interactive screen.
Visitors will be able to explore different interpretations of how the objects might have been used in the past. Among those on display will be two gold bracelets, discovered at a site in Gloucestershire, and treasures that the museum has not yet acquired. Other objects include a bronze dagger that was not intended for practical use because the blade was never sharpened and a bronze loop - believed to be a bracelet.
Chris Michaels, head of digital and publishing at the British Museum, said: "It gives us the chance to create an amazing new context for objects in our collection, exploring new interpretations for our Bronze Age objects."
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Emily Smith, Head of Audience Development at the Natural History Museum, told the BBC: "The VR experience has been hugely popular with visitors. "We've increased the number of slots and are now running the experience daily in response to demand. Visitors have even been bursting into spontaneous applause at the end of the showings."
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:55PM
Futuristic technology meets the stumbling block of human bodily fluids.
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:29PM
I've noticed younger generations don't seem to care about grease, WRT phones and tablets that are greasy enough that they almost seem to drip, so they might have less hangups than elders like gen-x and older. Dust too. Good lord kid I can't believe you text your mother with that filthy tablet what would she say...
On the other hand, for the VR things its not just skin oils to "ick" over, but facials and I suppose blood. Oh yeah and spit, spit: its not just for restaurant food anymore.
There might be cultural issues at play, looking at the condition of public facilities like bus stops and park bathrooms in certain parts of town vs others, so something like this might transition to VR headsets where the headsets in the nice part of town are 15 years old and still look new but in the bad part of town they, well, fit right in, looking at legacy pay phones or anything in public.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:44PM
We need a technical solution. Superhydrophobic and superoleophobic coatings so that the HUMAN STENCH just slides off. Then you can hand off the VR product to the next human in line, no matter what you were doing with it.
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(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:19PM
The mother likely grew up in an age where the social norm was for her to stay at home and look after the house, where her success and value as a human being would be judged by her peers in terms of the cleanliness, tidiness and hygiene of her home. She would have been brought up like that by her own parents. Times have changed, for the better in terms of gender equality, but perhaps for the worse where it's the norm for both parents to work which presumably allowed a drop in average wages in real terms, reinforcing that family model, and meaning there's much less time to notice the dirt in the home, much less do anything about it and don't even start on finding the time to teach the kids about it.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?