Acoustical heritage for virtual tourism on mobile platform

Virtual environments have commonly been used for the dissemination, education and public awareness of cultural heritage. However, interactive virtual environments have yet to be fully utilised as a tool to promote acoustical heritage in virtual tourism using mobile device. This paper introduces a practical implementation of acoustical heritage on iPhone platform that allows the user to experience panoramic view of various heritage sites, accompanied by its background sounds of different frequencies and amplitudes. The 360-degree panoramic view consists of immersion in an artificial heritage sites where the visitors feel just as immersed as they usually feel in reality. On top of this, an emotive background ambience with clearly defined sound can provide a certain degree of information about the present heritage sites that are tailored for mobile device sound properties. This will permit the user to navigate the cultural values in virtual heritage and explore multiple hypothetical acoustical heritage of a heritage site on mobile device.