Samsung Gear VR headset and table used to navigate VR roundhouse.
Maev Kennedy, British Museum uses virtual reality to transport visitors to the bronze age, The Guardian, 4 August 2015
Visitors to the British Museum are invited to walk into a 4,000-year-old roundhouse this weekend, where the fire is lit, the floor swept and some enigmatic objects lie waiting to be discovered.
The museum is launching its first virtual reality weekend, inviting visitors to engage with the past not just through the real objects in the galleries but through state of the art 3D headsets, tablets, and a projection of the recreated house into a dome structure large enough for groups of five to enter.
Digital recreations of three bronze age objects – one so recently discovered that the gold is still caked with mud – have been placed virtually within their original context, but there will also be gallery talks by the curator, Neil Wilkin, to encourage visitors to move from the recreated past to the real objects.
Mysteries surround the objects, which Wilkin argues could all have been found in a house of the period, sparking storytelling and reminiscence by the fireside.
