Immersive and Interactive VR Experience for Highlighting and Interpreting a Historic Event

This paper presents the initial results of a proposed workflow towards highlighting and interpreting a historic event with the use of an immersive and interactive VR experience utilizing the user’s multiple senses developed in the framework of the project Personalised interaction with Culture Realities Virtually Enhanced (CuRVE) [1]. More specifically, we present results from tests performed for the reconstructed battleship torpedo boat 11 (T11), where the users visit the shipwreck of the battleship Fethi Bulent, visit the battleship T11, navigate the ship deck, and interact with its reconstructed parts in order to experience the torpedoing and sinking of battleship Fethi Bulent in Thermaic Gulf of Thessaloniki during the night of October 18 / October 31, 1912, by Lieutenant Commander Nikolaos Votsis, commander of battleship T11. The specific event caused excitement on the Greek side as it was the most impressive success of the Greek Navy during the First Balkan War. The proposed workflow is an approach towards the development of a game-like environment where the users can learn about a historical event and supports the integration of the equipment for a high-level immersive realistic experience in a detailed and interactive virtual environment.