Lijun MA | Xiaobo LU, Tsinghua University , Beijing , China

Keywords: Virtual Reality, Cultural Heritage Digitalization, Dunhuang, Buddhist grottoes

This research project was conducted in conjunction with the National Basic Research Program of the People’s Republic of China. It is a multimodal platform for the presentation of digitized cultural heritage. This presentation combines Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, lives up even the most demanding artistic criteria and offers both the general public and Dunhuang specialists an immersive experience that complies with both scientific and artistic standards. The VR Museum is for the presentation of the digitized cultural heritage of Dunhuang, a Buddhist center on the ancient Silk Road famous for its cave temple. It is based on a high-definition virtual reconstruction of the current state of Cave 159 of the Buddhist Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang. This work employs VR methods to put the presentation visitor right into a virtual museum. The visitor can move about freely and, in an impressively immersive experience, get close-up looks at the details of the sculptures and murals inside. It brings together visual and auditory elements and shows murals from the Buddhist grottoes of Dunhuang from various perspectives.