A virtual holographic display case for museum installations

Today, it is important in society to make artworks accessible to mass audiences and to widen participation in culture. In such a context, virtual reality is one of the areas of greatest interest: new devices and new techniques are affordable for many users, and virtual and real worlds are often mixed together. In this paper, we propose a “virtual holographic” display, i.e. a stereoscopic virtual reality system that is able to replicate the behavior of a real showcase for exhibitions. It works in a completely virtual manner and it can yield to a new generation of entertainment “holographic” installations. We evaluate such a system through an experimental session with 20 users. In particular, we compare the proposed system, based on a stereoscopic technique (TD3D), with respect to a standard motion parallax technique in terms of the users' perceptual experience.