Remote virtual guidance in immersive museum applications

This paper describes an infrastructure for creating and controlling guided tours in Virtual Environments for museums. Specifically, we have developed several tools and techniques that allow interactive and dynamic guided tours to be run both locally, but also to be controlled globally between two different locations. Blending interactive storytelling and communication dialogue mechanisms with museum guidance concepts, the developed remote guidance system enables attractive museum applications to be shared and controlled globally, between museums. We describe several authoring tools for creating the tour's dynamic stories and dialogues, and the remote guidance (control) infrastructure and tools. Furthermore, several application examples are given.