VR Baixi: Improving Cultural Heritage Learning of Qin Dynasty via Virtual Reality

The Acrobat Figure (Baixi) unearthed in the Qin Mausoleum's K9901 burial pit, vividly reflects the acrobat arts and other court entertainment activities of the Qin Dynasty and shows the image of acrobat artists at that time. The acrobatic figures provide a brand-new perspective for future generations to understand the society of the Qin Dynasty, with important historical, artistic, and scientific value. Currently, the digitalization researches of the Terracotta Army are mainly focused on Warriors’ burial pits and cultural relics, there is little attention on the digitalized display and dissemination of acrobatic figures. Since the wide applications of virtual reality (VR) technology in cultural heritage digitalization, this paper aims to conduct research on cultural experience and knowledge dissemination of the Acrobat Figure via VR. Firstly, a learner-centric progressive design method was adopted to virtually reconstruct acrobatic figures of the Qin Mausoleum with its environment, and a VR Baixi experience system was built; secondly, to evaluate the effectiveness of the cultural knowledge dissemination and learning, a comparative study was conducted between the VR Baixi and the traditional Baixi documentary; finally, the users’ experience data on knowledge dissemination results (KDR), performance expectancy (PE), and behavioral intention (BI) were collected and analyzed. The experimental results show that compared with the traditional approach, VR Baixi significantly improves the users' motivation and willingness to explore, and enhances their knowledge experience of the cultural heritage of the Acrobat Figure, which provides an effective solution for the knowledge dissemination and learning of cultural heritage on general audiences, especially among younger groups.