Constrained interest-based tour recommendations in large scale cultural heritage virtual environments

Users of large scale cultural heritage virtual environments are exposed to information overload due to the plethora of represented entities of interest and the amount of the relevant information. Additional to the previous, users are exposed to route planning problems in which time should be considered as an important constraint. In this paper, the aim is to deal with these issues by providing users with constrained interest-based tour recommendations. A recommendation model is proposed to deal with the users information overload issue. A route planning algorithm supplied with recommendations by the recommendation model is designed to provide tour recommendations. The recommendation model as well as the route planning algorithm results are tested for various cases giving interesting outcomes. The recommendation model and the route planning algorithm are both integrated into the virtual environment and interoperating with navigation assistance methods to provide effective tour guide services applicable in virtual and physical environments.