Open Virtual Exhibit Creator (OVEC): An Open Source Framework for Virtual Reality Museum Exhibit Creation

Abstract

There have been numerous innovative and impressive works in the current landscape of applying Virtual Reality in museums, yet there is a striking lack of community resources to aid in their development. Curators without the technical background in VR are then left with a significant barrier of entry. This paper presents the Open Virtual Exhibit Creator (OVEC), a new open-source Unity tool aimed at closing this gap. OVEC was developed over the last year in partnership with the Wangensteen Historical Library at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities as an initial effort in creating an open source framework for Virtual Reality exhibits. Despite not being able to conduct formal user evaluation, sufficient progress was made and informal feedback was received so as to measure its success. OVEC shows potential to assist in the creation of VR exhibits and has a flexible design to allow for easy future extension.