New Storytelling for Archaeological Museums Based on Augmented Reality Glasses

Museums are places where cultural heritage is preserved and, therefore, we can consider them an essential resource to understand our identity, past and future. In the last two decades, they have increased the use of information and communication technologies in a remarkable way with the intention of reaching new audiences and spreading knowledge.

With the recent advent of augmented reality devices of the ‘view-through’ type, perceiving and interacting with virtual contents in the form of holograms anchored to the real physical space is now possible. One of the most interesting challenges is to leave the screen aside and interact with digital data in an intuitive way, through voice commands and gestures. This offers a new scenery for experimenting with storytelling creation, a current trend in archaeological museums.

In our effort to take advantage of the new capabilities of augmented reality glasses, we have developed different applications with the Microsoft HoloLens glasses. In this chapter, we explain our experiences in such developments, which have led us to create an innovative storytelling for the archaeological museum of the Almoina in Valencia (Spain), a singular project where we have experimented with a fictional holographic character that attends as a guide to present a story about the city life in Valencia during the time of the Roman Republic. The story is presented as animated sequences with video, 3D reconstructions and music. The visitor conducts the storyline interacting with the marked hotspots that appear over the ruins of the museum.