An increasing number of museums and art galleries have been turning to virtual reality (VR) in order to bring their exhibits to a wider audience and stay relevant in an increasingly digital world. Developer Erwin Wolf, however, has eschewed a physical museum and offers HTC Vive users the chance to explore a purely virtual museum.
The Museum of ThroughView is a purely virtual space that offers users a view of famous paintings and old photographs converted from 2D into 3D. As users walk around the virtual museum space, the various exhibits can be viewed as either flat 2D images, or as a 3D experience.
Each painting and photograph has extra background information that can be accessed to tell the user about the history of the photograph, where it was taken, or in the case of the paintings, some information about the painting and the person who created it.
Images from famous artists such as Rembrandt, Bierstadt and Monet are included in the virtual museum, along with an exhibit of photographs taken in New York before 1900 by photographer Jacob Riis.
The developer has not yet set a firm release date, but claims that The Museum of ThroughView will be available for HTC Vive sometime in August, 2017. The Museum of ThroughView is designed as a room scale experience, so users will need a play area of at least 2m by 1.5m to get the best out of the experience.
Further information and updates can be found on the Steam page.
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via Mint VR