Caravaggio in Rome: A qoe-based proposal for a virtual gallery

The spreading of low-cost and easy-to-implement systems for Virtual Reality, make it possible for a large number of consumers to experience this technology. The application fields span a wide range and recently the educational aspect started having a significant impact. In this paper we design a framework that allows the user to visit a virtual museum in which all canvases painted by Caravaggio and conserved in Rome are displayed. The aim of this project is two-fold: on one hand we provide the user with the possibility of having a personalized and educative exploration of an artistic content, while on the other hand we assess the acceptability of this virtual reality-based application by the final user. The system has been implemented in three different versions, one based on a standard interaction between subject and PC, while the other two rely on the use of Google Cardboard, a low-cost framework for virtual reality rendering. In order to assess the Quality of Experience of the users of the system, we performed subjective experiments that showed pros and cons of the proposed system and highlighted some guidelines towards the use of VR for serious gaming. The synergic cooperation between Art History and ICT gave to this project a peculiar aim in which both disciplines' interests and needs are profitably combined to build a Digital Humanities project. The result is a product, which is philologically accurate and at the same time innovative in terms of technologies used.